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NIGGER BABY 


And Nine Beasts 


BY 


/ 


ALMA FLORENCE PORTER. 


Initials and Illustrations by 
GUSTAVE VERBEEK 


NINE ANIMAL STORIES 
FOUNDED ON TRUTH 


ESS ESS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
NEW YORK ♦ LONDON ♦ MCM! 


Library Of Coftqre**, 

Iwt Topics Received 

NOV 19 1900 

* Loyyrtgnt entry 

J\n nr. /Sr$* 4 ** 

% &.£}&■■ 

SECONO COPY 

Delivered to 

ORDER DIVISION 
mpp. fi 1900 



Copyright, /goo, in United States and Great Britain 
By the Ess Ess Publishing Company 



William Green, Printer 
324-330 Pearl Street, New York City 


CONTENTS 


NIGGER BABY — a horse with a great soul 

ANGEL A CROW WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE 

DIABLITO HOW A BURRO EARNED FREEDOM 

TWO vSTRANGE BLACK MARKS — 

A STUDY IN FELINE HEREDITY 
BEAUTY A DOG WHO HAD A MISSION 

WOODLAND BANDITS — 

BABY RACCOONS MOTHERED BY A FOX 

THE YELLOW TRAMP— 

A CAT SAVED FOR CIVILIZATION 

THOR A BEAR WHO REMEMBERED 

CACCIO A DOG WHO LOVED A TURTLE 









































































































































































































































































































































































































NIGGER BABY 


A HORSE WITH A GREAT SOUL 


RINCESS was the name of 
a famous racehorse, a beau- 
tiful, shining black creature 
who had won splendid med- 
als and a gold cup so fine 
that it was kept always 
locked in a velvet case, with 
a front of glass through 
which we children used to 
gaze upon the treasure with eager and rev- 
erent admiration. 

Princess had never lost a race in her life, 
and the Spring in which my story begins 
she had won her most important victory in a 
great contest where the finest horses from 
North, South, East and West were her com- 
petitors. Soon after this famous race, my 
5 



NIGGER BABY 


father, who was the owner of Princess, sent 
her out to our ranch for a long rest in the 
broad clover meadows, along with a few 
other fine animals. 

This ranch was out in California, away up 
on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, where the 
Russian River flows into the sea. I was 
eight years of age at the time when Princess 
came to the ranch and, as I had lived there 
ever since I could remember, was as thor- 
oughly acquainted with every animal and bird 
on the place, and understood them as per- 
fectly, as if I had been born in the meadows, 
one of them. Therefore I felt well equipped 
to initiate the beautiful newcomer into the 
mysteries of the woods and fields. I talked 
to her precisely as I should have talked to a 
human companion. I wove long wreaths of 
pink clover blossoms for her daintily arched 
neck. I twisted her silky mane thick with 
black-eyed Susans, and whispered to her 
every secret of my heart. Her great black 
eyes, flashing with fire and soul, looked into 
my face wonderingly at first, following my 
every expression, accepting my affection with 
gentle dignity, until, after a few weeks of 


NIGGER BABY 


careful study, she was convinced of my sin 
cerity, which is all that great, dumb animals 
demand in return for the gift of love and 
devotion. No amount of attention or tender 
caresses will deceive the great animals for one 
instant. Their Creator has endowed them 
with a penetrant sense that flashes through 
one’s soul like a searchlight. 

The first unmistakable evidence I had that 
Princess fully realized the meaning of my 
words, and entered into my troubles with 
intelligent sympathy, was one day when 
Marcus Weeks, a very bad boy who lived on 
a neighboring ranch, killed a thrush with his 
slingshot. It was a mother thrush, and I knew 
where her nest was built and exactly how many 
wee, naked birds were waiting for the worms 
and the berries the mother had gone to find 
for their dinner when she was killed by the 
terror of the country, Marcus Weeks. I also 
knew that without help they would die ; and 
I tearfully explained it all to Princess while 
I was digging for some worms and hunting 
for wild strawberries, all of which I intended 
putting into the nest, with the hope that the 
hungry young birds would have sense enough 


NIGGER BABY 


to discover the food, now that their busy 
little mother could no longer fill the tiny 
mouths that seemed perpetually open and 
perpetually crying. 

I had gathered a fine repast of worms and 
wild berries, all of which I fastened up in 
a great oak leaf, while hastening to the tree 
where the nest was hidden. To my dismay 
I found that the low swinging branch, on 
which I was in the habit of climbing, had 
been cut off. The branch had drooped 
dangerously low, directly over the training- 
road. As I stood there in utter despair, 
Princess, who had followed, looked up at the 
nest, then down at my miserable little self, an 
unusually thin and tiny mite for an eight- 
year-old youngster, all legs and arms and 
freckles. She hesitated in apparent thought 
for a minute ; then, with infinite grace and 
condescension, sank to her knees before me. 
The quick-witted animal had thought of 
what had not occurred to me; but I was 
prompt to understand, and in a flash I had 
kicked off my shoes and climbed to her 
back. She immediately rose to her feet with 
the same gentle grace with which she had 


NIGGER BABY 


knelt, and stood motionless under the nest 
while I dropped the leaf containing the lit- 
tle feast into it. This performance we re- 
peated morning and evening for many a day, 
until one bird after another had fluttered 
away. 

After feeding the birds that first day I did 
not immediately dismount, but sitting astride, 
boy-fashion — the only way I had ever ridden 
— allowed Princess, cantering gently, to take 
me out of the meadow up into the pine 
woods and back again to a huge oak tree, 
which stood near the centre of the meadow, 
and which was our regular place of rendez- 
vous. There I rolled off her back like a boy. 

My mother had died before I could re- 
member, and there were no neighbors within 
many miles of the ranch ; therefore my sole 
companions were the animals and the men 
about the place ; the only feminine element 
was a fussy old housekeeper, whose life was 
perpetual reprimand and worry, and whose 
existence was the one rift in my lute. 

She gravely objected to my friendship 
with the black racer, whose flashing eyes 
always gave her a start — the good old woman 
9 


NIGGER BABY 


confided this to my father — and who was 
no fit companion for anyone who ever ex- 
pected to become a lady. As I had no such 
aspirations, and infinitely preferred being a 
boy, the blunt, honest kindliness of the men 
being much more to my ftking than the nervous 
solicitude of her well-meaning self, I decided 
to be as boyish as possible while young, be- 
lieving that I should grow up to be a man. 

It happened the following Spring, late in 
May, one early morning between dawn and 
sunrise, that I was awakened by the shaking 
of the shutters of my bedroom window. 
Our old stone house had only one floor, 
with odd wings rambling out here and there, 
and at the end of one of those wings was 
my bedroom. The windows were raised, but 
the shutters closed, and as the noise con- 
tinued I called out, sleepily, “ What is it ? ” 

The voice of Joe, the little Mexican 
mulatto who had charge of the horses, an- 
swered, through the window : “ Ef you 

knowed what was down in the medder, you 
wouldn’t be a-sleepin’ till all hours. It’s a 
nigger baby, that’s what ’tis, an’ your paw 
allows hit’s fer yew ! ” 

IO 


NIGGER BABY 


I rubbed my sleepy eyes, growing wider 
and wider awake at each word, until I heard 
Joe walk off with a peculiar chuckle that 
always indicated a delightful happening of 
some sort. I lost no time in scrambling into 
my clothes, with never a thought of soap or 
water, without a glance at comb or brush, 
and thrusting my bare feet into tough little 
copper-bound boots and struggling impa- 
tiently into my red jersey jacket, I rushed 
like a small whirlwind through the dew-laden 
grass, crushing the ox-eyed daisies, with their 
wide-awake looks of surprise, my thoughts in 
a breathless whirl of delight as I pictured the 
nigger baby awaiting me out in the meadow. 
I had never seen a nigger baby in all my life, 
and very few other babies, for that matter. 
It was the burning regret of my life that no 
babies had ever come to our house. The 
fact that I had no mother seemed, to my 
small mind balanced with the absolute jus- 
tice of childhood, no good reason for with- 
holding any other blessing. Flying through 
the wet fields that morning, I fully believed 
that my prayers were at last answered. That 
the baby had been first sighted in the 

ii 


NIGGER BABY 


meadow did not surprise me in the least, as 
tradition had taught me that they were found 
in most unlikely places. 

Everybody knew that Lily Flint, a lovely 
child, whose father’s place adjoined ours, a 
few miles up the coast, had been discovered 
under a wild rose thicket where the fairies 
had left her; also that the bad boy, Marcus 
Weeks, who had killed the thrush with his 
slingshot, and snared the meadow larks, had 
been found under a great cactus where he had 
been thrown away by the brownies ; and some 
of us suspected that his mother was sorry she 
had taken the trouble to rescue him. 

Peering under every blackberry bush and 
every blossoming thicket as I ran, suddenly I 
came to a clump of great oak trees, and 
there, under branches that almost swept the 
ground, stood Princess. As I rushed toward 
her she threw back her head with a quick 
little neigh and came a few steps to meet me. 
Beside her stood a tiny, exquisite miniature 
of herself, save that there was no spot of 
white to break the smooth, satiny blackness 
of the little animal. Princess had two white 
stockings on her own black forefeet, which 
12 


NIGGER BABY 


were considered marks of great beauty; but 
nothing in all the world could have exceeded 
the beauty of the shining black image at her 
side. The wide-open eyes of the little one 
were fixed upon me with surprise and terror, 
and not until Princess had leaned her beauti- 
ful head down on my tangled hair did the 
little Princess move grudgingly forward and 
submit to my rough embrace. 

All disappointment was forgotten in the 
wonder and admiration that Princess had in- 
spired, the wise animal who had known where 
to find that splendid infant. I sat down in 
the long wet grass, where the pink clover 
blooms bent, whispering together, their 
glossy pink heads shaking with laughter. It 
was clear as day, to my mind, they were all in 
the secret. 

I sat there for hours weaving wreaths of 
clover and daisies to twist around the little 
neck, while the tiny animal lay at my 
side with her head in my lap. When at last 
my wreaths had been completed and I clasped 
my arms around her, tugging with all my 
might to get her on her feet so that I might 
decorate her properly, Princess gazed at us 
13 


NIGGER BABY 


with the softest expression I had ever seen in 
the fiery black eyes. 

Hours later, when a great hue-and-cry had 
been raised at my untimely absence from the 
house, and the housekeeper had discovered 
my clothes scattered over the floor, clearly 
betraying that I was but half-dressed, she and 
my father with my grown-up brother Bob 
came down to the meadow in search of me, 
and I was carried, screaming and kicking, back 
to the house for breakfast. It was a horrible 
upsetting of all my plans, as I had decided 
that morning never to go back to the house 
again, but to live the remainder of my life in 
the meadow with Princess and the nigger 
baby, in that meadow where the carpet was 
the pink plush of clover blossoms and the 
house the drooping branches of the giant oak 
trees. 

I submitted with bad grace to the few 
hours I was forced to be separated from Prin- 
cess and her little one, and when with them 
again I laid fine plans for the future. I had 
always worn boy's shoes and knickerbockers 
and ridden boy-fashion, and that day I con- 
fided to Nigger Baby that when we both 


NIGGER BABY 


grew up she should be a great racer and I 
would be a jockey, and we would never lose 
a race. The black eyes of Princess flashed ap- 
proval, and Nigger Baby laid her head in my 
lap. 

Nigger Baby belonged to me absolutely. 
My father gave her to me as a birthday gift, 
but advised an immediate change of name. 
Nigger Baby, he declared, was an absurd and 
altogether inappropriate title for the child 
of the famous Princess and grandchild of the 
celebrated Clio, and offspring of the finest 
line of equine heredity in the country. 

My brother Bob suggested that Princess 
Flo would be a good name for the future 
racer, as it would be a blending of my own 
name and that of her mother. The sugges- 
tion met with my entire approbation, as I had 
been bred to a full realization of the dignity 
of a great racehorse. The youngster herself, 
however, flatly declined to accept the new 
name. She would stand in stubborn silence, 
in apparent unconsciousness of our calls of 
Princess Flo, but at sound of “ Nigger Baby” 
she would spring to meet or find me, no mat- 
ter where I was hidden. With all others she 
*5 


NIGGER BABY 


was shy, running like a deer when any of the 
men attempted even the most friendly over- 
tures. 

My father impressed upon me the impor- 
tance of never attempting to mount the colt 
and, with my hands between his own, pressed 
the delicate bones of her back, that I might 
understand how waxen they were, and that 
even my light weight would bend them out 
of symmetry before they had sufficiently hard- 
ened. 

The entire Summer was virtually given up 
to Nigger Baby. The clover had grown 
weary with blooming, and buttercups and 
bluebells had decorated the beautiful creature 
day after day with the wreaths she had grown 
to expect, until my fingers ached with the 
weaving. She was growing rapidly, becom- 
ing tall and slim and exquisite as her mother, 
and the soul — the wondrous, fine intelligence 
of that high-bred mother — was rapidly devel- 
oping in the child. 

When the mood was on Princess, she would 
invite me to ride by dropping to her knees 
for me to hop on like a boy and, with Nig 
ger Baby trotting at our side, would take me 

16 


NIGGER BABY 


to strange places in the woods farther than I 
had ever dreamed of venturing alone. 

It happened one day that we were a long 
way from home, and while going through a 
narrow defile came suddenly upon the haunt 
of a deer. A tiny deer had just been found 
by its trembling, frightened mother. The 
little deer, so new and ignorant, looked at us 
with the unconcern of utter innocence. The 
mother deer flashed a swift, startled glance at 
Princess; then stood motionless. I did not 
hear a sound, but I had only human ears, and 
could not grasp the message that flashed 
from Princess to that mother deer, nor what 
Nigger Baby said to the tiny, gray-plush 
deer; but I was conscious that something 
very tender was told in that silent voice that 
God gives to great, honest souls to express 
beautiful truths. It is a voice that cannot lie. 
Very few animals possess it, and only the very 
wise would wish it. 

Princess moved softly out of the little 
canon, walking backward, as did Nigger Baby 
also, who imitated her high-bred mother in 
many things and whose manners were charm- 
ing and perfect as those of an empress. 

17 


NIGGER BABY 


I have since suspected that Princess did not 
place entire confidence in either Nigger Baby 
or myself, because after backing out of that 
narrow defile she suddenly turned and con- 
ducted us home through twisted, intricate 
paths that we could not possibly have re- 
traced, even had we desired to invade that se- 
cret home. 

One day late in October I went down 
through the meadows, from which the flowers 
were gone and where only the clover leaves and 
the grass lingered. Princess and Nigger Baby 
both heard my call from some distant part of 
the field and came bounding to the oaks, 
where they stood awaiting me. There was 
mystery in the very air. I scented it the in- 
stant I caught sight of Nigger Baby standing 
in unusual dignity, with her graceful head 
thrown back and her eyes shining. 

It was her custom to come bounding to 
meet me, sometimes rolling over in the grass 
in her joy at seeing me, and she never missed 
thrusting her nose into my jacket pocket for 
the chocolates or the gum drops we both 
loved. 

To-day, however, Nigger Baby stood 
18 


NIGGER BABY 


strangely still until I had come quite close to 
her, then dropped to her knees precisely as 
she had seen her mother do when disposed 
for a canter. Here I must call attention to 
the fact that my peculiar ideas of politeness 
never permitted me so much as to hint at 
mounting Princess unless by her own in- 
vitation. 

I caught my breath with delight ! Could 
it be possible the time had come when the 
tiny waxen bones were firm enough to bear 
my weight ? Princess surely knew what was 
right, and this had evidently all been arranged. 

I sprang very lightly to the back of Nigger 
Baby, who rose with a bound and a plunge so 
sudden that I was flung headlong into a 
clump of wild sweetbrier, that would have 
torn a girl’s attire to shreds. The scratches 
from the sharp thorns were more than 
enough to bring tears to the eyes of any girl. 
However, I remembered my boy’s shoes and 
leather-bound knickerbockers just in time to 
live bravely up to them. Suppressing my 
cries of pain with a mighty effort, I scrambled 
out of the bushes as best I could, when a shrill 
neigh of displeasure from Princess, the first 
19 


NIGGER BABY 


harsh sound I had ever heard from the ex- 
quisite creature, fell upon my ears. Her head 
was thrown up and her eyes were flashing 
with anger, while Nigger Baby stood with 
downcast head in utterly abject remorse. 

Princess walked quickly toward me, and, if 
human sympathy was ever expressed by eyes 
grown instantly soft and tender, this creature 
looked it into my face ; then falling gently to 
her knees, she waited for me to mount. I lost 
no time in accepting the graceful apology for 
her youngster’s carelessness, and she cantered 
out of the meadow with a neigh not usual. 
Nigger Baby did not follow. For the first 
time in her life she had been forbidden to 
accompany us. It is unnecessary to state 
that I felt worse punished than the baby. 

The day following, when, with meek and 
chastened air, Nigger Baby came to meet me 
and dropped to her delicate knees, I sprang 
without fear to her back, and she rose as 
gently as if blown upward by the wind. I 
was perfectly conscious that she had meant 
no mischief the previous day, but, sharing my 
own joy, combined with her exuberance at 
being on the point of a scamper through the 
20 


NIGGER BABY 


woods and along the high road by the sea, 
had unconsciously made that fatal plunge. 
This day she started off, not with the easy, 
swinging gait of her well-trained mother, but 
with one minute a trot, then a sudden bound, 
then a gallop, then a jerky effort to canter. 
When we reached an open stretch on the sea 
road, she ran like a deer. I tugged at her 
mane and pleaded with her to turn back, for 
the sun was setting and we were still a long 
way from home ; but it was very difficult to 
induce her to end her frolic. At length I 
succeeded, and she went more slowly until we 
were several miles from home, when she de- 
liberately stopped, dropped to her knees and 
waited for me to dismount, plainly informing 
me that she was tired out and had had all she 
desired of me, for that day at least. 

I was too young to pay much attention to 
the condition of the colt while urging her 
homeward, but as I stood by her side and saw 
that she was panting and flecked with foam, 
and that her slim ankles were quivering, I 
was thoroughly scared, for, child as I was, my 
knowledge of horses had taught me the grav- 
ity of a happening of that kind. 

21 


NIGGER BABY 


Scolding and sobbing over the weary baby, 
I quickly unbuttoned my short cloth skirt and 
with it rubbed her quite dry, then ripping the 
skirt down the back and tearing off the band, 
I tied it over her back with some wild grape 
runners and led her quickly home. It was 
quite dark when we reached the stable. I 
had the discretion to go directly to Joe, feel- 
ing perfect confidence that he would know 
what to do for the indiscreet baby, and also 
that he would not betray our secret. It was 
really the fault alone of Nigger Baby, but it 
would have been difficult to convince my 
father of the fact. 

Princess was standing near the stable with 
Joe when we approached, breathless and 
warm, and on Joe’s honest, homely face I 
detected a worried look, as Princess had 
managed to impress her trainer with her 
own intuitive alarm at our prolonged ab- 
sence. 

Luckily no harm resulted for the youngster, 
but my ruined skirt betrayed me, and I was 
forbidden to go to the meadows for three 
days. It was the first terrible punishment I 
had ever known, and I afterward believed 


22 


NIGGER BABY 


that it came to prepare me for a more dread- 
ful one approaching. 

I had a well-meaning aunt living in San 
Francisco, who, like the good woman in the 
Bible, was troubled about many things. She 
was suddenly assailed with the idea that it 
was high time for steps to be taken toward 
my civilization and education. That way 
sorrow lay — a greater sorrow than life, with 
all its cruel vicissitudes, ever held for me at 
any other time. 

Heretofore my father had taught me all that 
we considered necessary, and up to the civiliz- 
ing period we had been living an ideal exist- 
ence. I had learned to read and write, could 
recite pages of Shakespeare, knew some of 
Watts’s hymns, had learned Drake’s “ Birth 
of the American Flag” by heart, and could 
tell the correct pedigree of every horse on the 
ranch. Having never heard of either gram- 
mar or arithmetic, my mind was perfectly easy 
about them, and I had managed to pick up 
absurd bits of learning from the grown-up 
people with whom I had associated intimately 
from babyhood. Therefore my friends, the 
folks on the ranch, considered me no less than 
23 


NIGGER BABY 


a paragon of knowledge. It was a horrible 
humiliation to hear this aunt bitterly upbraid 
my adorers, to be taken from my ideal home, 
rigged up in girl’s toggery and sent to board- 
ing school, and there initiated into the un- 
realities of life. 

My parting from Nigger Baby was inde- 
scribably pathetic. She followed me with 
neighs like the cries of a deserted child, after 
I had flung my arms around her neck and 
sobbed out my misery on her silky mane. 

It was with deep humiliation and active 
hatred that I watched the preparation of fine 
linen things with little lace edges, of dresses 
trimmed with ribbons and bows, and in those 
girl’s shoes — the first I had ever worn in my 
life — I walked on burning ploughshares. These 
humiliating preparations served to distract my 
mind, however, from the terrible grief of sep- 
aration. But when it was all over and I was 
settled in the fashionable boarding school I 
lay awake night after night, furious and angry 
at the loss of my dignity and the downfall of 
my hopes. How could I ever dream of ful- 
filling my promise to Nigger Baby and be 
a jockey and win the races I had planned? I 
24 


NIGGER BABY 


sobbed my bitter woe to the pillow, with the 
dismal reflection that doubtless the baby was 
already dying with a broken heart, and so it 
all did not really matter in the least. 

The Winter months crept drearily away, 
and in my battles with arithmetic I forgot 
much of my Shakespeare and all of Watts’s 
hymns. My sole interest, my very heart, was 
in the letters from Joe, in which some of the 
words were printed and others written with 
much difficulty, all spelled in the way most 
easy to Joe, and clear as day to me. 

He delivered my daily messages to Nigger 
Baby and told me the youngster knew the 
very pocket where he carried my letter, and 
when he took it out to read to her, she 
rubbed her nose over the paper for all the 
world like kissing it. I laughed aloud with 
delight. She had rubbed her slim black nose 
into my hair and over my face every day 
of her life, and it was small wonder that she 
knew and loved my letters. 

The long Spring passed, and June, the 
month of vacation, came at last, and I was 
free to return to the ranch and suspend civili- 
zation for the blessed period of four long 
25 


NIGGER BABY 


Summer months. With the approval of my 
father, I had determined to leave the girl’s 
clothes at school. In a new pair of leather- 
bound knickerbockers and a skirt a trifle longer 
than of old I started on my homeward way, 
rejoicing. 

During all the long day in the car I thought 
with impatience of the five miles between the 
station and the ranch — of the slow, lumber- 
ing carriage horses, who would loiter away 
the golden moments, every one so precious to 
me and my darlings. 

When at last the roar of the whistle had 
died away, and I sprang from the car to my 
father’s waiting arms, I heard a long, soft 
neigh that set my heart beating with familiar 
joy. On the opposite side of the station stood 
Nigger Baby. I started with delight not un- 
mixed with dismay. The splendid coal-black 
horse with eager eyes was baby only by tra- 
dition. She was larger, more elegantly built, 
if possible, than her mother, and when I saw 
the delicate limbs restless and quivering, the 
fine head thrown up with conscious power 
and unmistakable pride, I felt a distinct chill 
of fear and dismay ; but when I elapsed my 

26 


NIGGER BABY 


arms around her neck and burst into tears, 
and she gave a little answering sob, I knew it 
was the heart of the baby that answered. 

Then I noticed that she wore a tiny gray 
su&de saddle, a boy’s saddle. I looked up at 
my father with tears of joy. “ It was Joe’s 
thought,” he said, laughing; “he knew you 
would not ride a girl’s saddle and risk ruining 
the perfect gait of the colt.” 

I was not old enough then to realize Joe’s 
subtle kindliness, but through the mist of 
years — yes, and of tears — I see the tender 
workings of a heart that animals and children 
trusted. 

The beautiful creature, whom it seemed 
desecration to call Nigger Baby, even in love, 
was down on her knees in the old way. I 
lost no time in hopping to that dainty saddle, 
and she was away like the wind. In the gen- 
tle, swinging motion I recognized Joe’s careful 
training, and as she proudly swerved from 
one gait to another, to display the result of 
her schooling, I had a guilty conviction that 
Nigger Baby had achieved far more than I 
during those months of stubborn repining. 

I shall never forget that ride so long as I 
27 


NIGGER BABY 


live. The glad, sensitive heart of the animal 
was beating in unison with my own; the flush 
of childhood was in our blood, and all things 
were very real. Life was a beautiful song 
still unsung, and the first sweet notes were 
trembling through our souls. 

There was great rejoicing at our house that 
night, and my head was quite turned with 
happiness, a happiness that drifted like sun- 
shine through the beautiful months that fol- 
lowed. 

We three — Princess, Nigger Baby and I — 
began life once more in about the same sweet 
way as of old, save perhaps with a more seri- 
ous realization of our happiness. The great, 
sweet clover heads whispered joyfully to- 
gether, the low winds shook spicy odors from 
their glossy tresses, and the meadows were 
pink with bloom. 

Everyone went to bed early at our house. 
As we were up at sunrise, all were too sleepy 
when twilight came to dream of lingering till 
lamplight, and long before dusk had darkened 
into night the house was silent and every 
member of the family sound asleep. 

One night a few weeks after my return I 

28 


NIGGER BABY 


was awakened by the shaking of my shutters. 
I sprang to the window and peered cautiously 
through the slats. Two big black eyes met 
my own, and a low, subdued neigh reassured 
me. Flinging open the shutter and seeing 
Nigger Baby standing like a huge black sil- 
houette in the soft, white moonlight, I felt 
sure that I was dreaming and looking upon 
the light of some strange day. It may seem 
a queer assertion for a country girl to make, 
but it is, nevertheless, true that in all my life 
before I had never seen moonlight. 

This scene, weird and lovely, thrilled me 
with the same yearning I read in the quick, 
comprehensive wave of Baby’s graceful head, 
as she dropped softly to her knees and looked 
up at me with a peculiar droop of her left 
eyelid, which I had often noticed when she 
wished to impress upon me not only that she 
understood but also that she expected of me 
not to be entirely dense. 

Nigger Baby had deliberately come to 
tempt me out into the night, into the white 
light that flooded the long roads and sparkled 
on the sea. I was deeply grieved that this 
beautiful creature should commit an act that 


29 


NIGGER BABY 


her own conscience must have assured her 
was distinctly wrong; else why had she stolen 
so silently to my window and whispered her 
invitation with a wink of her mischievous eye? 

In my sorrow for Nigger Baby’s transgres- 
sion I quite lost sight of the enormity of my 
own in being led into the scheme; I gave no 
thought to the grave anxiety, the actual ter- 
ror, of my people should they by accident 
discover my absence. I lost no time in shed- 
ding my little nightgown and hurrying into 
knickerbockers and jacket, not bothering to 
put on either shoes or stockings, and in a 
surprisingly short time stepped from the win- 
dow to the back of Nigger Baby. 

Her unshod feet sped lightly over the 
moonlit road ; her delicate limbs seemed to 
fly with the night wind. In a very ecstasy of 
delight I looked at the shining braids of 
moonlight tangled in the gentle waves whose 
low, crooning murmur, I felt sure, was the 
sobbing of the mermaids — of whose existence 
I had no possible doubt in those days, whose 
sparkling hair I saw that night with my own 
eyes, and whose mellow voices I heard with 
my own ears. 


30 


NIGGER BABY 


When we sped away from the cliff road 
that bordered the sea and turned to the 
shadowy woods, I firmly believed that Nigger 
Baby had found where the fairies were danc- 
ing, and that she was speeding to them with 
might and main. The existence of the little 
folk was so firmly grounded in my mind that 
it did not seem in the least strange that Nig- 
ger Baby had discovered them in my absence, 
nor that she had possibly been invited to 
fetch me to their dance. The dewy woods 
were full of strange, wild odors ; the weird call 
of night-birds, whose voices I had never heard 
before, came to my ears like music from afar. 
All seemed a part of Baby’s eerie surprise. 

We were two sensitive children, and both 
were intoxicated with the strangeness, with 
the elation akin to madness, which the 
strong white light of the moon inspires at 
times in man and beast. 

But soon the shadows of the woods grew 
blacker ; a young deer started, with a scream 
of fright, and a strange bird uttered a pierc- 
ing shriek as a whir of black wings brushed 
across my face and startled me to a cry of 
terror. As I hugged the neck of my horse, 
3 1 


NIGGER BABY 


and buried my face in her silky mane, she 
wheeled about of her own accord and sped 
away like a deer back to the white road of 
the cliffs. 

Then I knew that by mistake she had 
wandered to the brownies’ haunt, where the 
pixies and the witches and all uncanny 
things were lurking in the weird shadows, 
and where, more than likely, a witch was at 
that moment waiting with her magic wand 
to touch the runaway girl and runaway horse, 
and change them into dragons. How 
could we ever have hoped to find the fairies, 
with our runaway hearts beating a loud warn- 
ing to those little white souls that “ some- 
thing wicked this way comes.” 

My little bare feet and legs, wet with the 
heavy dew, clung like bits of ice to the wet 
sides of my horse while we sped homeward 
like the wind. All chilled and guilty, I gave 
Baby a good-night hug and a whispered 
chiding for her midnight escapade. Then I 
kissed her between her eyes, after I had crept 
noiselessly through the open window. 

I wondered if Princess knew, if anybody 
knew, but wisely decided not to press the 
32 


NIGGER BABY 


question, nor even to mention it, being well 
aware that it would not only incriminate 
Nigger Baby, but would reflect question- 
ably upon my own dignity and moral courage 
in having fallen so easily into the scheme 
cleverly concocted by a headstrong pony, 
who was not supposed to know right from 
wrong. This was a mistaken supposition, 
however, as Nigger Baby knew right from 
wrong equally as well as myself, and had a 
conscience fully as delicate. She was greater 
than I, inasmuch as she had had the courage to 
fearlessly work out her plans while I was 
but a miserable little coward, who followed 
dumbly. 

The morning after our frolic I woke 
very late, and felt a fine shock of fright to 
discover the housekeeper standing, with 
troubled face, at my bedside. My head was 
aching and my throat so sore that, even 
had I desired to make a clean breast of the 
misdeed of the night, I was too ill to do so. 
Then followed great consternation, the doc- 
tor, dreadful doses and much undeserved 
sympathy, and a long, unbroken sleep. 

Late in the afternoon I was awakened by 
33 


NIGGER BABY 


a caller, who entered through the open front 
door and walked quietly through the front 
room and little side hall that led to my 
room. It was Nigger Baby. The queer 
little droop of her eyelid, as she stood with 
her head thrust through the doorway, assured 
me that she understood perfectly, but would 
never betray the guilty cause of my illness. 
Then she looked away from me, and her eyes 
fell upon a dish of sugar on the table at the 
bedside. There were six lumps in the dish, 
and with the same impartiality that I had 
always displayed in my dealings with her, she 
daintily helped herself to three and, crunch- 
ing them contentedly, turned around in the 
small apartment without knocking anything 
over, and walked out with a satisfied little 
neigh. 

Within a few days I had entirely re- 
covered. Then followed a long, happy Sum- 
mer; but never did Nigger Baby repeat her 
clandestine invitation, and for many a day 
the memory of that midnight scamper lay 
heavy on my soul. 

Before the Summer had ended I began to 
have vague forebodings, strange presenti- 
34 


NIGGER BABY 


ments, impossible for my childish mind to 
define. I was conscious of a troubled si- 
lence that had fallen upon our house; also 
of the discouraging fact that I was debarred 
from certain family conferences — which was 
an unprecedented proceeding, as all matters 
had been freely discussed in my presence ever 
since I could remember. 

On occasions when I surprised my father 
and brother deep in low-voiced conversa- 
tion with each other, or with certain men 
who were strangers — which was still more 
frequent — they ceased with suspicious sud- 
denness, and I was promptly despatched to 
a distant part of the place on some trivial 
errand. 

A vague intuition dawned within me that 
this unusual state of affairs presaged sorrow. 
I felt it dimly through the long, sweet 
Summer days that flitted by like gold- 
winged butterflies. My departure was 
gloomed with more than natural regret; a 
great weight seemed to have fallen upon 
my heart, and even the animals seemed 
conscious of the misery that held all silent 
and constrained all, during that dreary day 
35 


NIGGER BABY 


of parting. A great burning lump was in 
my throat and I could not utter a word, 
not even to Nigger Baby, whose soul shone 
in her troubled eyes, and whose face was 
streaming with the tears I had wept upon 
it. And after I was again in school that 
indefinable presentiment of misery lingered 
and grew in my desolate little heart, until I 
became so inured to the thought of coming 
sorrow, that the blow which finally fell proved 
less of a shock than my people had dared 
hope. 

One day, a few weeks following my return 
to school, I was summoned to the reception 
room to meet my father and brother. I 
went with lagging step to hear what my 
own heart told me was the sorrowful reve- 
lation they had come to make. I heard all 
in utter silence, too stupefied with grief and 
rage and utter astonishment to breathe one 
word of how their statement horrified me. 

They broke to me very gently the fact 
that the ranch had been sold and that they 
were going to the new mining region of the 
Sierras; that there had also been a sale of 
all the horses, Princess and Nigger Baby 
36 


NIGGER BABY 


included ; that the latter, who had belonged 
absolutely to me, had brought a very large 
sum, that was now in the bank in my name, 
all my own, to use exactly as I liked when I 
became a little older. I am sure they meant 
kindly when they attempted to console me 
with the promise that the following Summer 
I should visit them and more than likely 
chum with bears instead of horses. 

I looked at the kindly, worried face of 
my father in perfect astonishment, and won- 
dered how he could have found it in his heart 
to commit a deed so inhuman as selling Nig- 
ger Baby. In my childish judgment it was 
worse than murder, and the money in the 
bank in my name seemed the greatest sacri- 
lege of all. Not one word would come from 
my trembling lips; the horror lay too deep 
for childish recriminations or tears. They 
coaxed, cajoled, entreated that I would kiss 
them good-bye like a good child and not add 
to their grief at breaking up the old home. 
They made promises of delightful happenings 
for the future, and were deeply perplexed that I 
failed to fall in with the novel scheme in true 
childlike fashion. I had heretofore been the 
37 


NIGGER BABY 


simplest little human problem in their exist- 
ence ; my father was distinctly annoyed and 
my brother was furious enough to box my 
ears at my having suddenly turned difficult. 

I did not speak, because neither words nor 
voice would come, and something of this must 
have been apparent to them, when at night 
they reluctantly kissed me good-bye and left 
tears on my cold little face. My own eyes 
were bright and dry. I was simply stunned 
with my first great grief and fired with the 
first terrible responsibility of life! It had 
been clear to my mind from the beginning of 
my father's recital that it was my solemn 
duty to rescue Nigger Baby from a dreadful 
fate, and, like Jeanne d’Arc, I was willing to 
go to the stake if the sacrifice would free my 
loved ones. 

Worried and perplexed, I lay awake, revolv- 
ing one absurd little scheme after another in 
my foolish brain for the speedy deliverance of 
my horse, driven almost to despair by the 
firm conviction that, Nigger Baby being the 
most desirable possession on the face of the 
earth, her present owner would make a des- 
perate fight to hold her, even should an army 
38 


NIGGER BABY 


advance to her rescue. I prayed that night, 
with a deeper fervency than I had ever before 
felt, that Nigger Baby might be delivered from 
the power of the enemy. 

I have had many prayers answered, but no 
response ever came more swiftly than that to 
this heart-broken little prayer of mine. 

Possibly to facilitate the answering of that 
prayer the Creator had in the beginning given 
me an Uncle Nate, who was a bachelor, and 
whose country place was in the San Jos6 
Valley, not far from the boarding school to 
which I had been condemned. He had been 
abroad during the past two years, and his 
place had been closed, but that very day a 
letter had reached me telling of his return 
and expressing his pleasure that my father 
had given permission for me to visit him dur- 
ing all the short vacations, not only at his 
ranch in the valley, but also at his home 
in San Francisco during the Winter 
months. 

I had always adored my Uncle Nate. 
With the sole exception of Nigger Baby 
there was no one in the world who under- 
stood me so perfectly and loved me so well. 

39 


NIGGER BABY 


In that hour of deep despair I remembered 
him — and fell asleep. 

The very next day one of the schoolgirls 
returned from a visit to her home in San 
Francisco, and in great excitement gave us 
the account of a terrible accident that had 
happened on the Cliff road. She said that 
Senator Lord had bought a vicious brute 
named Nigger Baby, at a recent sale of fine 
horses, and had presented it to his daughter; 
that the “ brute ” had thrown and all but 
killed the beautiful Patricia Lord. Then our 
informant read us an account from the news- 
paper, which said that “ Senator Lord out- 
bid all other purchasers at the horse sale, 
the mare’s fine pedigree having inspired 
perfect confidence in her good qualities, and a 
belief that she would make a splendid addi- 
tion to his daughter’s famous stable. With 
that view he paid a fabulous sum for the 
mare.” The report further stated : 

“ Miss Lord, who was a fearless horse-* 
woman, not liking the ugly fire in the ani- 
mal’s eye, determined to conquer her in the 
very beginning. When Miss Lord mounted 
the brute, the flapping of her long skirt ex- 

40 


NIGGER BABY 


asperated the mare and caused her to rear 
viciously in either fright or temper. The 
dauntless young woman did not spare either 
spur or whip, and the flanks of the brute 
were covered with blood when, with a frantic 
plunge, she took the bit, her head stretched 
forward, her ears lying flat, and plunged 
down the road, a maddened runaway. The 
young woman succeeded in clinging to the 
saddle until the frantic beast reared, and gave 
a backward plunge that unseated the lady and 
flung her into the water, the road being on 
the edge of the sea.” 

I burst into sobs of rage and horror ! 
The sensitive young mare, who had never 
felt a flapping skirt, never known a crowded 
drive, never felt a whip or spur in her life, 
who was the soul of gentleness and love, 
whose delicate ears were attuned only to 
tender words and affectionate confidences, 
had been all but murdered by the heartless 
woman whose notorious horsemanship de- 
pended upon the sharpness of her spurs and 
the length of her whip ! 

The beautiful, dumb creature was sensitive 
as a lute, and the hard touch of a vindictive 
41 


NIGGER BABY 


human hand had awakened the mighty wrath 
of a great nature. I was proud of Nigger 
Baby. It was a contest of fury, and the 
nobler brute won. 

With wicked but very honest regret I 
read that, by a miracle, Miss Lord had es- 
caped serious injury. With my heart beating a 
merry tattoo I also read that the “ vicious 
brute ” was to be disposed of at once. My 
plans were already unalterably arranged. Go- 
ing immediately to the preceptress, I implored 
permission to visit my uncle for a few days. 

The woman was well aware that the trip 
to the city could be made within three hours 
by train and that my uncle would be at the 
station to receive me; that I had the per- 
mission of my father to go whenever it 
would not interfere with my studies, and that 
the day being Friday, and no school held 
on Saturday, there was no good reason for 
denying my request. Nevertheless, she re- 
fused to let me go. But my determination 
remained unaltered; my good manners alone 
had suggested the asking for permission, 
which, in my secret heart, I considered en- 
tirely superfluous. 


42 


NIGGER BABY 


Late that night, when the house was 
silent, I let myself down the trailing rose 
vines at the end of the wing where my room 
was located, and, with scratched hands and torn 
frock, landed safe in the cool, dark garden. 

I ran every step of the way to the sta- 
tion, block after block, through the quiet 
streets, and found the midnight train on the 
point of starting. Following close to a very 
fat old woman, who was hurrying to the 
cars, I was doubtless mistaken for one of her 
belongings. Luckily, my little red pocket- 
book had been well filled by my father during 
his visit. Before morning I was in the city, 
ringing the bell of my uncle’s house, a for- 
lorn, frightened little runaway in a soiled 
white frock and garden hat. 

A violent ringing at a man’s front door 
bell, just before daybreak, is apt to arouse the 
entire household to investigation. When 
the door finally flew open and I saw the 
anxious faces of the servants, who were hud- 
dled together half-dressed, and in the midst 
of them my uncle, in his bathrobe and 
slippers, I gave a scream of joy and fell 
into his arms, a worn-out little ghost. 

43 


NIGGER BABY 


With infinite tenderness he gathered me 
up and carried me into the library, while 
one of the maids brought some sweet mulled 
wine which my uncle insisted that I should 
drink. Between the gulps I managed to 
pour my troubles into his sympathetic ears. 
He listened with grave attention, and his own 
great heart assured him of the justice and 
necessity of rescuing Nigger Baby at once. 

He sent me to bed with instructions to 
the maid to remain with me until I was 
asleep, and promised that he would see the 
owner of Nigger Baby as soon as possible, 
and arrange for her ransom. 

It was noon of the following day before 
I opened my eyes, so completely had my 
burdens been lifted from my weary little 
shoulders. Uncle Nate had gone out before 
breakfast, the maid informed me, but had re- 
turned and was waiting in the dining-room 
to take his breakfast with me. 

I read the good news the minute I looked 
into the homely old face all aglow, with a 
twinkle in the kindly eyes. We did not 
loiter over breakfast, as the dear old man 
was quite as eager as myself to see the affair 
44 


NIGGER BABY 


settled; we hastened to the fine stables of 
Senator Lord, where we found the mare in 
solitary disgrace, in a box apart from the 
other horses. 

When we entered the yard I gave a call, a 
combination of whistle and catcall that I had 
summoned her with since the day she was 
born. Instantly there was a plaintive answer- 
ing neigh, so human in its pathos that Uncle 
Nate and I looked at each other through 
tears. Nigger Baby was tied to the box. 
A coarse, stout rope drawn tightly around 
the beautiful, satin neck was considered 
necessary to hold the delicate animal. With 
a spring like a young monkey I was in the 
feed box, with my arms around her neck, while 
the man untied the great knots of her rope. 
Her head fell to my shoulder, and she was 
trembling with excitement and joy like a 
nervous child. 

The man warned me to be careful, as I 
flung off her leading rope, and she followed 
me out of the stable. To be careful of my 
own, indeed ! 

When we were out in the yard, in the sun- 
shine, I took the beautiful, sensitive face be- 
45 


NIGGER BABY 


tween my hands, standing the while on my 
tiptoes, as I was not very tall in those days, 
and I whispered, sorrowfully : “ Nigger Baby, 
how could you ? ” 

She looked into my eyes and — I burst out 
laughing. 

Nigger Baby had winked ! 

Her conduct had been decidedly reprehensi- 
ble, there could be no shadow of a doubt 
about it ; but, when I thought of the very few 
ways open to the poor darling to get back to 
her own folks, I could not find it in my heart 
to mar our joy of meeting by a proper chid- 
ing, and out of deference to her feelings I 
never referred to the affair in the future. 
There were ugly wounds in the beautiful 
flanks, which made her shrink and wince like 
a hurt child when I touched her ever so 
gently — wounds made by the famous horse- 
woman. 

Joe, our old trainer, was then in my uncle’s 
service, and, as he was to take the mare down 
to the ranch in the San Jos6 Valley that day, 
we waited until he made his appearance, 
not trusting our wounded treasure out of our 
sight until she was safe with an old friend. 

46 


NIGGER BABY 


There had been no difficulty in arranging for 
the purchase of Nigger Baby, as her owner 
frankly expressed his willingness to rid him- 
self of the troublesome brute. So she became 
the property of my Uncle Nate. 

We all went down to the ranch together 
that day, and when the principal of the school 
from which I had taken my unceremonious 
departure refused to receive me again in her 
conventional establishment, Uncle Nate and 
I fell upon each other’s necks in a transport 
of joy. I spent a long happy year with this 
uncle before he could succeed in finding a 
satisfactory school for me, attending in the 
meantime a country school whenever the 
spirit moved me. 

Nigger Baby had become more intelligent, 
more loving and more delightful than ever 
before, and our comradeship was not in the 
least interrupted by the training that Joe had 
begun. 

She afterward became even more famous a 
racer than her mother, and the jockey who 
rode her to her first victory — it was her first 
race as well — told me that he was only a fig- 
urehead, for Nigger Baby would have won 
47 


NIGGER BABY 


the race without a rider, simply because Joe 
had whispered to her, as she was about to 
start, that all depended on her winning. The 
jockey added, almost with awe: “ There isn’t 
a horse on earth who could have beat her that 
day!” I did not see the race, as I was at 
school ; but I saw another that was a grander 
victory than the winning of a dozen ordinary 
races. 

Many splendid horses had been entered 
from different parts of the country, and ex- 
citement ran high, as stakes were heavy. The 
jockey who rode Nigger Baby had been 
bribed to hold her in and allow the race to 
be won by a famous horse from England. 
At a critical instant, when Nigger Baby shot 
past her most important rival, the jockey 
quietly forced his hold and tightened the rein. 
The mare swerved for an instant in visible 
surprise; then, with one of her mighty back- 
ward plunges, she unseated the jockey, sent 
him flying over the fence, and finished with- 
out a rider, pulling up at the judges’ stand as 
though guided by an invisible hand, and 
standing there as the other horses dashed 
past. 


48 


NIGGER BABY 


The jockey, who was picked up with a 
broken collar bone, acknowledged his treach- 
ery, and while the race could not be given 
to Nigger Baby, as she had not carried the 
requisite weight, it was declared off. It 
was run over a few days later, and Nigger 
Baby won by three good lengths. 

I was sent away to school once more and 
could be with Nigger Baby only during my 
vacations; but as those were busy years for 
the Baby, while she was winning fame and 
wealth, I became reconciled to the inevitable 
partings, knowing that before very long I 
should leave school and she would be mine 
forever. 

When at last school days were over and I 
came to young-ladyhood, and also to the full 
possession of my treasure, the black racer was 
the most beautiful animal to be seen on the 
fashionable drive where I rode daily. The 
flapping of my long skirt and the clumsy side 
saddle bothered her not a bit as she flew 
along the fine road by the sea, and it was our 
proud record that not a horse on the road 
ever passed us. 

We often met Miss Lord on her big gray 
49 


NIGGER BABY 


horse urged to a gait by whip and spur. We 
both knew her well, but when we met I al- 
ways looked the other way, and Nigger Baby 
winked. 


i 


50 


ANGEL 


A CROW WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE 



HE was a very young black 
\ crow, with a broken wing 
J and one blind eye, when 
we found her. We named 
her Angel in the begin- 


If ning, but later events hav- 

^ * ing convinced us that she 

possessed neither heart nor conscience, and 
was far from living up to her heavenly name, 
we decided to change it, in the hope that 
the punishment, of which the crow was en- 
tirely conscious, would awaken some spark 
of remorse or penitence that we fondly trusted 
might be slumbering within the strange, wise 
nature of the little sinner. 

I was seven years old at the time, and 
was visiting at my uncle’s ranch in Southern 


ANGEL 


California. My four cousins, whose ages 
hovered around my own, were all boys, and 
immediately upon my arrival had politely 
transferred their redoubtable and somewhat 
weird attentions from their grown-up sister 
Tilly to myself — and it must have been to 
that young woman’s unspeakable relief. The 
boys presented the crow to me. But as it was 
I who had first discovered her one chill, rainy 
morning, when we children were on our usual 
march through the woods in search of sport, 
I did not receive the crow with the gratitude 
or politeness that met the requirements of the 
startling code of manners which we children 
had marked out for ourselves, and to which 
we religiously held one another. I have 
since suspected that the mischievous pro- 
clivity afterward developed by Angel was 
carefully instilled into her little mind in the 
beginning, as a retaliation for my lapse of 
good manners. 

She was fluttering about in the wet woods, 
a scared, drenched little thing only a few 
weeks old, that some careless hunter had 
maimed with fine bird shot and left for dead. 
I carried her home and nursed her ten- 
52 























. 









































ANGEL 


derly back to life, and incidentally, to mis- 
chief. The boys set the broken wing ‘and 
split the tiny tongue, that she might learn to 
speak, and we straightway proceeded to pet 
and spoil her, and later, to pay the penalty for 
it and suffer as surely as ever unwise parents 
suffered from the caprices of an unruly child. 

It was not very long before the little black 
Angel was following us children wherever we 
went, fluttering from one shoulder to an- 
other with insinuating little pecks at our 
cheeks — that painful fashion birds have of 
kissing — and she quite won our hearts at 
the very beginning, and disarmed all suspi- 
cion as to her good faith. 

When out of sight and sound of the 
house we children frequently waged terrible 
warfare among ourselves, settling our per- 
petual differences with fists for weapons, 
when words failed, but always appearing at 
the house later, innocent and smiling, at 
peace with one another and all the world. 
One day we had an unusually fierce scrim- 
mage over a game of mumble-peg, of which 
the crow was a silent, grave witness. At 
the end of the row, before peace had been 
53 


ANGEL 


declared, Angel fluttered away. When we 
appeared at the house at the dinner hour, 
hungry and reconciled, we surprised Angel 
giving the details of the fight to the family 
in a wonderfully realistic manner. She was 
jumping up and down, screaming awful 
words in her guttural voice, but so badly 
articulated that only the guilty ones could 
understand her. She hit out viciously with 
her wings, then buzzed around swiftly as a 
whirling, black pin-wheel, scattering her 
feathers and screaming like a bird gone mad. 

We children looked furtively at one an- 
other in guilty silence, and my aunt anx- 
iously wondered if Angel had fits. 

It is needless to say that Angel forfeited 
our love and respect on the spot. Tale- 
bearing was the one unpardonable sin in our 
somewhat unique calendar, and we promptly 
decided to deprive her of her name. After 
long deliberation we concluded to call her 
Sweet, which was the name of the young 
man who was paying attention to my Cousin 
Tilly, and against whom we children cher- 
ished a frank resentment, for the sole reason 
that two evenings of each week, Sunday and 
54 


ANGEL 


Thursday, we were forbidden to enter the 
parlor, where the wheezy old organ stood, 
and where we dearly loved to gather after 
tea to sing all the songs in “ The Golden 
Wreath." 

There was usually a quarrel over which 
song should be sung first, and it was invari- 
ably settled by each singing the song he had 
selected, in sublime disregard of the horrible 
discord. It was rather agreeable than other- 
wise to us, as our entire enjoyment lay in the 
noise ; and I, who had not the slightest ac- 
quaintance with either music or instrument, 
played the accompaniment in a fantastic way 
that set the old organ to grinding out strange, 
frantic discords, creating a very symphony of 
horror, which all went to make up the musi- 
cal education of Sweet, the little crow. She 
sang louder than any of us, in rasping, gut- 
tural shrieks impossible to describe. She 
fairly gloried in it, flapping her wings in an 
ecstasy of delight, and laughing a long 
“ Caw ! caw ! ” from the highest scream to the 
lowest hoarse whisper, running the dreadful 
scale of discord with the confidence of 
Paderewski. 


55 


ANGEL 


Occasionally we were too weary at night to 
sing, particularly after a long ride with my 
uncle to some distant ranch, or when we had 
been trying new and, needless to say, forbid- 
den horses down in the meadow. Sweet, 
who was never weary, always perched on that 
old rickety organ at dusk and began scream- 
ing for us, seeming daily to find new harsh 
notes in her uncanny little throat, until her 
clatter became unbearable. It was this habit 
of Sweet’s that awoke the dreadful inspira- 
tion to use her as a Nemesis to work out a 
fine vengeance on Thomas Sweet, our enemy, 
who had banished us from our favorite 
ground. We had always taken great pains 
to entertain the crow on the occasions of the 
young man’s visits, and had managed to keep 
her out of the parlor only with the greatest 
difficulty, it being quite useless to keep her 
locked up, as her dismal wailings and our 
sympathy invariably effected her release. 

My Cousin Tilly had recently returned from 
a visit to our aunt in San Francisco and had 
been greatly impressed with certain interior 
decorations, which she unwisely decided to 
imitate in the old adobe house on the ranch. 

56 


ANGEL 


She ordered the doors to be taken down and 
portieres substituted, not realizing that she 
was abandoning her weapons of defense 
against a wicked crow, four bad boys and a 
nice little girl. 

The boys told me in great confidence that 
William Sweet had been courting Cousin 
Tilly for two years, that he was a nice young 
man with good property; and I heard Aunt 
Amanda remark to one of the neighbors that 
“ William has given signs, and the engage- 
ment of the young people will come off most 
any time.” 

It was twilight of a sultry Summer Sun- 
day, and we children had not been allowed to 
leave house or yard all the long, warm day 
save to attend morning service and Sunday- 
school later. The crow had flapped dismally 
around with us ever since tea, and as we “ bad 
five” sat under the grape arbor, exchanging 
anarchistic views of Sunday and declaring, 
with innocent irreverence, what we would 
have ordained for Sunday had we been the 
Lord, Sweet, with a low, disgusted caw, flew 
silently away. 

The twilight deepened, and we watched the 
57 


ANGEL 


stars flash out one after another, but no light 
streamed from the parlor windows. We un- 
derstood the reason for that when Johnny, 
the youngest and worst of the boys, suddenly 
approached and told us, with great disgust, 
that “ William is popping the question to 
Tilly, and they don’t have to have no light.” 

It was astonishing how quietly five rough, 
noisy children could creep, making no more 
sign than field mice, to the rose bushes under 
the end window of the parlor, which was 
just back of the little horsehair sofa where 
William Sweet and Cousin Tilly sat every 
Sunday night. We crouched in the thorny 
bushes with ten wide-open ears, and very soon 
we heard the big voice of William tell my 
cousin, in a very silly way, that she had been 
sweet Tilly about long enough, he reckoned, 
and asking her how she would like to be Tilly 
Sweet after this. 

At that momentous instant a shrill scream 
burst from the crow, followed by a loud “ Caw 
— pshaw! You’re a fool and I’m a devil!” 
Then a noisy flapping of wings and an agon- 
ized shriek, as though someone was being 
murdered. 


53 


ANGEL 


We heard Tilly cry out, in an angry voice: 
4 Go away, you nasty brute ! ” and doubtless 
in the sudden shock she gave her beau a push 
that he misinterpreted. Then followed a 
furious exclamation from William: 

'‘Very well, my lady; you’ll be sorry for 
that ! ” Then a rush of heavy footsteps from 
the room, a burst of hysterical sobbing from 
Tilly, and the crow, in her softest voice, which 
was very much like the rasping of a rusty 
file, singing the words of a rowdy song my 
big brother had taught her a few days before: 
“Come on, boys; let us make a night of it! 
Come on, boys ! caw ! ” 

We desired no more urgent invitation, and 
instantly tumbled pellmell into the parlor 
through the window. Cousin Tilly had van- 
ished and the field was ours. We lost no 
time in making a light, and in less than a 
minute we wicked, conscienceless, bad six — 
the crow was as bad as any of us — were sing- 
ing away with might and main. 

We felt very pious as we decided that in 
deference to the Sabbath we would sing only 
religious songs, but failing to agree upon any 
particular one, I played an ear-splitting ac- 
59 


ANGEL 


companiment to “ The Sweet By-and-By,” 
while Johnny chose “ Rock of Ages,” and the 
other sturdy voices shouted forth their es- 
pecial selections ; and the crow, who adhered 
vigorously to her original invitation : “ Come 
on, boys ; let us make a night of it ! ” covered 
herself with glory by making most noise of all. 

I have often wondered since how Uncle 
Andrew and Aunt Amanda, who had re- 
tired early, ever managed to sleep during 
that frightful racket. The only solution lies 
in the fact that the walls of the old adobe 
house were very thick, and Tilly had not been 
allowed to interfere with the doors on the 
floor above. 

The crow never lost an opportunity of 
doing a good as well as a bad turn to any of 
the bad five. Once she did something for me 
that canceled the memory of all her mis- 
deeds and made me her stanch ally to the 
very end. Aunt Amanda had presented me 
with a cute little gold thimble and a tiny, red 
morocco thread-and-needle case, in the hope 
of encouraging a disposition to mend my 
frocks, that were always torn at the gathers as 
well as in various other places. One after- 

60 


ANGEL 


noon my aunt insisted that I should begin to 
sew. How can I ever express the humiliation 
I felt, when I slipped that gold thimble on 
and began to jab the needle viciously into the 
little white frock I was set to mend! The 
four boys stood in a solemn row before me, 
and the crow was perched on my shoulder, 
silent with surprise and sympathy. I felt a 
hundred times more disgraced than when I 
had worn the dunce’s cap on certain occasions 
— not voluntarily. The boys began to dance 
around, calling sissy-names and singing, in a 
tantalizing fashion : “ Girl, girl, girlie get your 
thimble on ! Boys, boys, boys may have a 
gun ! ” 

I endured it until my little shoulders seemed 
crushed with my load of shame, and despera- 
tion made me reckless. Flinging my disgrace- 
ful implements to the garden seat, I sprang 
like a cat for the tangled hair of Cousin Billy. 
He was so taken by surprise that before he 
had time to defend himself I managed to 
throw him down and was cheerfully pounding 
his head on the ground, encouraged by the 
delighted shouts of the boys and the joyful 
“ Caw ! caw ! ” of the crow. Then Billy begged 
61 


ANGEL 


off, crossing his heart that he never meant the 
mean things he had said, and taking awful vows 
never to call me names again. In the ex- 
citement of the fray I did not notice that the 
hoarse caw had ceased to mingle with our 
screams. 

When at last peace was declared, and one of 
the boys had promised to read a story from 
the Arabian Nights while I finished mending 
my frock, there was no sign or trace of thimble, 
scissors, thread or little red morocco case, and 
from that day to this no one has ever dis- 
covered where those evidences of my humili- 
ation disappeared. 

When Sweet fluttered to my shoulder about 
half an hour later, and turned her one sound 
eye up at me in her wise, all-knowing way, I 
could no longer doubt the source of my de- 
liverance from my enemies. 

The chicken-house was situated some dis- 
tance from the house, at the end of a long 
lane, and it was the custom of Aunt Amanda 
to go there every morning with a yellow bowl 
filled with white cornmeal mixed with warm 
milk, for those* of the little chickens who 
could not or would not eat with the others. 

62 


ANGEL 


That mixed-up meal was a dainty that Sweet 
simply adored, but did not thoroughly en- 
joy unless snatching it from the mouth 
of some half-famished little chicken. Aunt 
Amanda, who allowed all creatures dependent 
on her to do as they liked, humored the crow 
precisely as she did the children, and allowed 
her to enjoy the dainty in her own way, always 
taking precaution to prepare a quantity suf- 
ficient for all. 

My aunt was a very fleshy woman ; indeed, 
she was so fat that her walk was a decided 
waddle, and when hurrying, as she usually 
did — there were so many duties always await- 
ing the dear, busy hands — she swayed from 
side to side like a ship. 

Sweet always followed her down the lane, 
not in her dignified crow way, but keeping a 
few inches above the ground, with both wings 
outstretched, flopping from side to side just 
as auntie did, puffing a hoarse imitation of 
auntie’s breathing. When we children laughed, 
the crow would fly in great anger to Aunt 
Amanda’s shoulder, calling us uncompliment- 
ary names and crying pitifully to give her the 
impression that we were teasing. When 
63 


ANGEL 


Sweet heard the reproof : “ Do be quiet, chil- 
dren; it is a shame to tease the poor crow 
continually. For pity’s sake, let her alone!” 
she would cast a defiant look at us with her 
one wicked eye, fly down, and with out- 
stretched, flapping wings waddle again behind 
dear, patient Aunt Amanda, making her the 
laughing stock of all who witnessed the mim- 
icking of the deceitful, ungrateful crow. 

The visits of William Sweet had ceased 
since that fateful Sunday night, and we chil- 
dren had undisputed possession of the parlor 
every Sunday evening; but for some unac- 
countable reason we did not seem to realize 
the unmitigated joy upon which we had so 
surely counted for Sundays and Thursdays. 

Cousin Tilly’s bright face had grown pale 
and her mouth drooped in the same pathetic 
way as did the round little mouth of Tiny, the 
baby, when we forgot to give her the quick 
kiss and rough hug she had grown to expect 
from us. 

Cousin Tilly no longer told us stories or 
played “The Battle of Prague” on the or- 
gan. She became more silent day by day, 
and both my uncle and my aunt were 

64 


ANGEL 


saddened and wrapped in the same dreary 
silence. 

W e children, in a state of utter misery, kept 
our guilty secret for two weeks, until, at a long 
secret session held in the attic one rainy day, 
we decided to go to William Sweet, explain 
to him the bewildering truth that Tilly was 
dying of love for him, and that it was the 
crow to whom she called the bad name; that 
she wasn’t a bit mad when he talked so silly 
the night he popped the question ; also, that 
the crow did not mean to call him a fool, be- 
cause she was not even acquainted with him. 
So how in the world was she to know it ? 

It was arranged to start very early the fol- 
lowing morning, before the other members of 
the family were awake, as we were determined 
to run no risk of being forbidden to leave 
home on that particular day. 

William’s ranch was six miles away, but we 
all had ponies and had frequently ridden over 
to his place to deliver the letters sometimes 
exchanged between the lovers. 

In the early dawn, as we stole quietly to- 
ward the corral, we decided not to tire our 
ponies, but to take the farm horses instead, as 
65 


ANGEL 


we should be well on our way before they 
would be missed. It was utterly impossible 
for us to do one good deed without a leaven 
of mischief. That the farm hands would be 
forced to lie idle at a very busy season, and 
that great uneasiness would be felt at the dis- 
appearance of the horses, gave us no concern 
whatever, but rather added to our pleasure, 
and made the reconciliation of Tilly and Will- 
iam a thoroughly enjoyable episode. 

William’s place was a large hop ranch, 
where it had formerly been our chief enjoy- 
ment to pay frequent visits; but what we 
termed our good manners had prevented us 
from venturing there since the estrangement. 
We were in high glee, as we rode leisurely 
along and planned that our cavalcade should 
approach William like an army. As we drew 
near we espied him down at the end of a 
long lane of blossoming hops, giving direc- 
tions to the workers, and we rode gleefully 
down to meet him. 

The wrath of Mr. Sweet rose to a dreadful 
point, when he discovered five heavy farm 
horses stamping through the paths that led 
between the rows of delicate hop vines. 

66 


ANGEL 


We had it all arranged that Cousin Andrew 
should speak, he being the eldest and most 
dignified, having reached the discreet age of 
twelve. 

“ What in blazes do you mean ?” thundered 
William as we drew near. 

Andrew rose in his saddle and shouted : 

“ We’ve come to tell you that you ain’t a 
nasty brute ! ’Twas the crow that Tilly meant 
that night, because her noise spoiled the 
spoony time you were having when you 
popped the question ! ” 

“Well, I’ll be blowed!” muttered William, 
growing redder and redder, all in a minute. 
Then, to conceal his bashfulness, he blus- 
tered: “You young imps had better mind 
your own business. I can ’tend to mine, I 
reckon ! ” 

This was a terrible damper to our expecta- 
tion. William had dealt a death-blow to our 
hopes, and our faces became pictures of de- 
spair, and there was not a dry eye in the little 
crowd, save the one of Sweet, the crow, 
which was turned disapprovingly upon the 
flushed face of the one whose name she so 
unworthily bore. We were very childish and 
67 


ANGEL 


had taken ourselves seriously, and were not 
prepared for the natural diffidence and re- 
serve of the young farmer. We had fully ex- 
pected William to throw himself upon our 
shoulders in a transport of joy, and more than 
likely offer us a tin cup full of his peach cider, 
of which we children were inordinately fond. 

I suddenly thought of Tilly’s sad face and 
of “ The Battle of Prague,” and believing 
our quest hopeless, burst into a storm of sobs 
and screams. I had found that method effi- 
cacious upon various occasions in dealing 
with my own people. This time it proved 
contagious. 

The boys and the crow joined in the wail- 
ing, and William clapped his hands to his 
ears. “ For heaven’s sake ! ” he shouted, “ shut 
up and tell me what you want ! I’ll do any- 
thing you want if you’ll only let up with that 
infernal noise ! ” 

He was standing near my horse, and I 
leaned over, pulling his hands away from his 
ears and screaming, to be heard above the 
racket, that was growing louder as the boys 
and the crow rose to the misery of the 
occasion. 


68 


ANGEL 


“ We want you to come back to our house 
Sunday nights and love Cousin Tilly again 
and give us some peach cider.” 

“ I’ll do it, by jingo ! But you folks get 
down from them jumbo horses, and the men 
will lead them out. You’ve about ruined my 
best vines as it is.” 

He lifted me from my horse to his broad 
shoulder, and I heard him mutter: “ I 
wouldn’t care a hang if every vine on the 
place was trod on.” The boys gave a war 
whoop of delight as they tumbled in undigni- 
fied haste from their horses, and the procession 
filed joyfully up the cool lane to the house. 
I, a very small, sunburned imp, with soiled 
gingham frock, was comfortably seated on 
William’s broad shoulder, the crow was 
perched on my head, and the boys trudged 
behind. 

The peach cider was cold and sweet. We 
drank it from tin cups, sitting in a row on 
the wooden bench on the back porch, which 
was all covered with yellow honeysuckle in 
full bloom. William had wisely filled a 
wooden pail with cider and bidden us help 
ourselves. Without doing the least violence 
69 


ANGEL 


to our own inclinations, we drank the last 
drop in the bucket, our code of politeness 
assuring us that we were only evincing a 
proper appreciation of William’s hospitality. 
Meanwhile, Cousin Andrew was patronizingly 
assuring Mr. Sweet that he must have been 
a chump to think that Tilly meant the rude 
name for him that night, and gravely 
asserting that “ girls never do speak their 
minds about a fellow right out before his 
face,” while the crow sat balanced on the 
edge of the now empty bucket loudly calling 
for more cider. William prudently ignored 
the cry, doubtless troubled as to the possible 
effect of the vast quantity already consumed. 

The big horses had been watered and were 
waiting out under the shade of the trees by 
the roadside, and we clambered merrily upon 
their broad backs, having arrived at a thor- 
ough understanding with William and having 
secured his solemn promise to come to our 
house that very night, which was Thursday, 
and his night anyway. With consciences 
clearer than, they had been for many a day, 
and filled with the righteous joy of having 
done a noble deed — and with altogether too 

70 


ANGEL 


much peach cider for our actual comfort — 
we rode slowly home and dashed gaily up to 
the corral near noonday. 

Uncle Andrew, who was waiting for us, 
looked gravely at the horses, and in a suspi- 
ciously quiet manner ordered the boys to go to 
the barn, and sent me to Aunt Amanda. The 
sight of a long willow in my uncle's hand filled 
me with horrible forebodings, and running 
with screams to my aunt — who was placidly 
picking over a bowl of white currants — I 
shouted that Uncle Andrew was murdering 
the boys ; some of them were already killed ! 
The crow, with wild excitement, was echoing 
all my fears and screaming “ Caw ! caw ! boys 
killed ! murder ! murder ! ” 

My aunt in much alarm waddled hastily out 
to the barn, the crow flapping behind her 
with usual mimicking waddle, while I threw 
myself to the floor, thumping my head with 
hard bumps on the bare boards. That was my 
manner of displaying deepest grief. 

My aunt returned in a very few minutes 
with the comforting assurance that the boys 
were alive, but that uncle had concluded to 
give them all they wanted of the farm horses 
7 1 


ANGEL 


that day, and had sent them to the fields to 
work; the willow was to be used only in case 
they objected. 

The boys were obliged to labor till past sun- 
down and immediately after supper trudged 
up to bed, too weary and sleepy to await the 
coming of William Sweet. Therefore I and 
the crow were the only ones to meet him at 
dusk down by the big gate, where the brier 
hawthorne was white with blossoms. 

He had brought for us children a huge 
brown paper bag of jujube paste and gum 
drops, as a token of his appreciation of our 
worthy action. This bag of sweets the crow 
and myself promptly appropriated. 

I reduced the boys to a state of abject 
slavery the next day by doling out to them, as 
the spirit moved me, the gum drops and jujube 
paste — of which my stern sense of justice 
demanded an equal division. 

The day following the reconciliation, we 
children made a solemn compact never again 
to disturb the courting of William and Tilly. 
We had suddenly formed a violent attachment 
for William on account of the peach cider and 
gum drops, and our unique compact was 

72 


ANGEL 


sealed with a blood-curdling vow that the first 
one who disturbed the courting should be 
killed. We looked meaningly at one another, 
and Sweet, who was present at our confer- 
ence, flashed her wicked eye sharply around 
the group with an uneasy little ‘‘Caw” that 
convinced us she understood. 

Once more we joyfully gathered around 
Cousin Tilly while she told us stories of the 
Indians, who had built the old adobe house 
where we lived, and of the dreadful battles 
fought in our very fields, while the boys added 
gruesome details of the scalping, which afforded 
us a particularly horrible delight. Once more 
“The Battle of Prague” wheezed out its weird 
artillery on the old organ to vary our musical 
pandemonium, and a state of peace and bliss 
too beautiful to last reigned in the house. 

One day three of auntie’s best silver spoons 
disappeared ; the very next day it was uncle’s 
gold pencil with the carbuncle in the handle ; 
the following day it was the corals on which 
Tiny, the baby, cut her little teeth. The crow 
added her pitiful wailings to our own, as she os- 
tentatiously assisted us children in our fruitless 
search, and echoed our lamentations at failure. 

73 


ANGEL 


A few days later Tilly’s gold belt-buckle 
and coral eardrops disappeared, and things 
began to look very black for someone; and, 
upon the very next day, when Tilly’s gold 
locket, containing a lock of William Sweet’s 
red hair, was missing, awful threats were heard, 
and our hearts were heavy with foreboding. 

One Sunday evening, when William was in 
the parlor with Tilly, and we “ bad five ” were 
in the garden catching fireflies in a bottle, the 
crow fluttered silently away, and before we 
had missed her a hoarse scream broke sud- 
denly upon our horrified ears. We knew that 
she had escaped from our watchful eyes, had 
taken her perch on the organ, and was shriek- 
ing: “Come on, boys, let us make a night of 
it!” We looked at one another in silence 
and in deepest grief, not alone because the 
penitent pleadings of William had been basely 
disturbed, but because all knew that a death- 
knell had been sounded. 

Without uttering a word we filed into the 
kitchen, where Andrew cut four short strips 
of paper and one long. These were placed in 
one of the boy’s hats and carefully shaken to- 
gether; then the hat was carried to the arbor 
74 


ANGEL 


and left on the garden seat. One after the 
other we went silently to the hat and, trem- 
bling, drew out a slip of paper in the dark- 
ness. Not a word was spoken, but the one 
who had drawn the long slip knew who was 
sworn to be the executioner of Sweet. 

On Monday morning we were not awak- 
ened by the usual “ Caw, caw ! hurry up, 
boys ! ” shouted at every window. On the 
seat of the summer-house the crow lay dead. 
Her neck had been twisted, and only the one 
to whom had fallen the heart-breaking duty 
could tell by whose hand Sweet had perished. 
With the relentless justice of childhood, we 
believed the expiation right and inevitable. 

We held Sweet’s funeral that same day, and 
with the board from our swing made a tomb- 
stone. With a red-hot poker Cousin Andrew 
burned on the board, Angel. 

In our anguish the sins of our dead were 
forgotten, even as grown-up people are wont 
to forgive the dead, who can offend no more, 
and as a last token of forgiveness we had re- 
turned to the dead the name she bore so un- 
worthily in life. 

We decided to bury her in William Sweet’s 
7S 


ANGEL 


hop orchard, to invite him to the funeral and 
impress indelibly upon his conscience that he 
was the sole cause of the death of our dearly 
loved Angel. 

By the time we reached William’s place, on 
our own ponies this time, we had sanctified 
the crow to actual sainthood, and had mapped 
out a bad half-hour for William, with the se- 
cret hope that he would attempt to set him- 
self as near right as the dreadful facts would 
permit, and would assuage our grief at the 
same time. 

William did so. With a keener intuition 
than one would have accredited to him, he 
gauged our misery accurately. 

After the funeral services, which we made 
as heartrending as possible, William silently 
led the way to the dairy, where a freshly 
opened barrel of peach cider was lying in state, 
crossways of a big sawhorse, and where a huge 
butter-bowl filled with freshly baked cookies 
was nicely balanced on the side of the barrel. 

The sad-faced procession, with hearts sus- 
piciously light, filed silently into the cool 
dairy. William closed the door upon us and 
upon our grief, and walked silently away. 

76 


DIABLITO 


HOW A BURRO EARNED FREEDOM 


E was only a little Mexican 
burro — one of those pa- 
tient, wise, tiny beasts not 
larger than a good-sized 
goat, and one of the most 
utterly misunderstood and 
most utterly unappreciated animals on the 
face of the earth. 

It had been the firm belief of my childhood 
that the horse represents highest intelligence 
among dumb beasts and that the donkey 
really personifies the stupidity and foolish 
stubbornness that I had always heard accred- 
ited to it. When I was ten years of age and 
went out to the mountains of New Mexico to 
visit my father and my brother Bob, and was 
told that I should have no other animal to 



77 


DIABLITO 


ride than the little gray burro that stood like 
a toy horse before me, I looked scornfully at 
the shaggy mite, who doubtless perceived my 
disdain. A few weeks later, when I had 
learned from a terrible experience the cruelty 
of my injustice, bitterly did I repent my igno- 
rant intolerance, and make all the loving repa- 
ration in my power. 

My father had mining interests which re- 
quired his attention at that time in the 
Mogollon Mountains, almost on the border 
line between Arizona and New Mexico. In 
the valley of the Frisco River, at a point where 
a splendid mountain torrent called White 
Water joins the Gila River, near the White 
Water Canon, was a small settlement called 
Harrington’s. The valley was fertile, and a 
few settlers had come there from time to 
time, building rude adobe houses and taking 
up sufficient land for small ranches and farms. 
The vicinity of the great San Carlos Indian 
Reservation, however, prevented many from 
caring to settle where lawless bands of 
Apaches were liable to make dreaded raids. 
But by the time of my story the Government 
felt confident of having the murderous tribe 
78 


DIABLITO 


under subjection, and the Army post, Fort 
Thomas, which was within a few leagues of 
both the settlement and the Reservation, in- 
spired the inhabitants of the valley with con- 
fidence. When gold was discovered in the 
surrounding mountains, the importance of the 
settlement had been greatly increased by the 
advent of many prospectors and miners, who 
made it an immediate starting point for the 
mining region and a general stopping place 
on the occasions of their frequent trips down 
from the mountains. 

As soon as I arrived at Harrington’s, my 
father presented me with the burro, and re- 
marked that if I hoped to accompany the men 
on their hunting expeditions I would be 
obliged to ride it. The hunting was excellent 
in these regions, as the wild creatures had not 
yet learned to be wary of man and were still 
unfamiliar with the sound of the rifle. The 
men hunted for red deer, beavers, great cinna- 
mon bears, wild turkeys and mountain quail. 
All of this game being new to me, I was 
naturally wild with curiosity and excitement 
at the prospect, and therefore decided to 
accept the inevitable — the burro. 

79 


DIABLITO 


Many misgivings beset me as I clambered 
into the clumsy Mexican saddle held firmly to 
the little beast by two wide cinches. The 
burro seemed so tiny, and the little legs — slim 
as those of a young goat — did not indicate 
strength or endurance; the hard little hoofs 
alone gave evidence of usefulness. But when 
I saw great, heavy men mount the tiny beasts, 
who trotted off with perfect ease, I began to 
have more faith in my own shaggy mite. We 
rode up mountain sides, over narrow shelving 
trails where the rocks fell hundreds of feet 
in one straight descent of unbroken wall, 
and where a false step would have sent us 
hurtling down to instant death. The sure, 
steady footing, the wise discretion of my 
burro in firmly placing his feet on the only 
spots of safety, inspired my confidence and 
dispelled much of the secret scorn that the 
diminutive size and the long ears had caused 
in my ten-year-old heart. 

About five miles from the settlement, this 
White Water stream fell down a steep decliv- 
ity, in wide sparkling falls ; then, forcing its 
way through a narrow defile where the stu- 
pendous walls of rock almost closed together, 

80 


DIABLITO 


flowed out suddenly into a broad basin-like 
formation of rock, thus making a lovely little 
lake, where the pure waters seemed to rest 
before tearing their way on down through the 
canon, to meet the Gila River, on its swift way 
to be swallowed up by the burning, insatiable 
sands of the desert. At this point of the 
stream the fishing was so fine that a bit of red 
flannel on a hook would almost instantly land 
a mountain trout — a speckled beauty whose 
fear of the sportsman had never been 
awakened in this little basin jealously guarded 
by snow-crowned mountains. This spot be- 
came my favorite haunt a little later, when I 
was thrown upon my own resources and those 
of the burro for entertainment. Then I grew 
to understand and love the little beast; and 
when I sat on the rocks and talked to the 
wondering creature, with the same confidence 
with which I had been in the habit of telling 
the secrets of my heart to the horses at home, 
it was a study to watch his great, deer-like eyes 
gaze into my own with perfect understanding 
and sympathy. 

I called the burro Diablito, which means 
little devil. The old Mexican from whom my 
81 


DIABLITO 


father bought him had named him and warned 
me seriously against placing too much faith in 
the malo diablito , as he had been guilty of ter- 
rible misdeeds. The burro had a bad name. 
There was no mistake about it, and even my 
newly awakened affection could not blind me 
to the fact that he richly deserved his un- 
savory reputation. That very Spring, one 
day after he had taken his master safely up a 
dangerous mountain trail, where a goat with 
difficulty could have found footing, and had 
reached a point of safety with his burden, see- 
ing before him a pinon tree, he laid back his 
long ears and made a swift run for the tree, 
under whose low branches was barely enough 
space for his tiny self to pass. In a jiffy the 
wicked burro had, with deliberate intention, 
swept off both master and pack, and coming 
out safe on the other side of the tree, stood, 
burro-fashion, immobile as a sphinx of the 
desert. The Mexican gathered up himself and 
the pack as best he could, and making his 
way around the tree to where the burro stood, 
gave him a well-deserved beating, and strap- 
ping the pack once more to the saddle, 
mounted the perverse little brute. The burro 


DIABLITO 


had apparently turned to stone. He would 
not move. The hard little hoofs were planted 
well apart, the long ears were standing up- 
right in sullen defiance and a far-away look 
shone dreamily in the soft, big eyes. 

The man broke many sticks on the stub- 
born little back, but still the burro stood 
motionless, amid the storm of blows and 
curses, for hours. The master continued 
beating and swearing and abusing and calling 
the burro all the bad names he knew — and he 
was familiar with many — all of which the 
burro understood perfectly ; but, being unable 
to swear back, contented himself with con- 
vincing his master of the dignity and power 
of silence — and also of the indisputable fact 
that he richly deserved the name that had 
long clung to him. 

After wasting several hours of the precious 
daylight the burro suddenly laid back his 
long, straight ears and, like a flash, darted in a 
swift run along the narrow trail, up the steep, 
rapidly darkening passes, till he came to a 
broad, level stretch, where he stopped with a 
sudden halt, planting his hoofs firmly in the 
ground, and pitched his master headlong over 
S 3 


DIABLITO 


his down-thrust neck. As darkness had fallen 
by this time, they must remain until daylight 
in this desolate spot, within a few miles of 
their destination. The burro stretched him- 
self out in luxurious abandon, clearly express- 
ing a decision not to stir another step that 
night. 

Beatings and curses had not appealed to 
the little beast, and had certainly failed to in- 
timidate him, but it is an open question 
whether a little coaxing or bribing with a bit 
of sugar, or some dainty the burro loved, 
would not have induced him to change his 
purpose to camp supperless on the bleak 
mountain top. 

In time freaks of stubbornness became so 
frequent, and the burro’s mind was so en- 
tirely bent upon devising new and weird 
tricks with which to infuriate his master, that, 
although the troublesome animal was sure- 
footed, intelligent and strong, the Mexi- 
can’s patience became exhausted, and he de- 
cided to sell him. The animal’s good traits 
recommended him to my father, who pos- 
sibly may have conjectured that, while 
brutality had failed to break the creature of 
84 


DIABLITO 


his tricks, the kindness and good-fellowship 
he would find in me might appeal to his 
better nature. 

My pockets were usually stuffed with gum 
drops, rock candy and sweet biscuit, all of 
which I daily shared with Diablito, and 
within a week he was my slave, following me 
wherever I went. He seemed like a fairy 
horse, so wise and responsive, and yet so tiny, 
and before very long became quite as dear to me 
as the horses had been, perhaps even a little 
dearer. He was little, like myself, and — 
grieved as I am to admit it — was stubborn 
and had a bad temper like myself. I talked 
these matters over freely with Diablito, who 
certainly understood, and in the light of my 
iniquities became ashamed of his own. At all 
events, a great change came over the burro, 
and we never referred to his past. 

One day my father informed me that he 
and Bob were about to start with a party of 
men for the mining regions, and that he had 
decided to leave me at the settlement with 
the Harringtons until his return. Being the 
only child about the place, the settlers had 
taken great interest in me, and old Mr. 

8S 


DIABLITO 


Harrington and his wife were well pleased to 
have me remain at their house, and assured 
my father of good care for both myself and 
Diablito. The burro, who had been listening, 
with his absurd ears standing upright and 
alert, looked dreamily at my father. 

At that time no trouble was apprehended 
from the Apaches. There had been no out- 
break for more than a year, a wholesome 
fear of the soldiers near-by keeping them in 
check, and their quarrelsome proclivities were 
exercised in warring amongst themselves. 
My father explained this to me clearly, but 
seriously warned me against seeking out 
during his absence other trails than those he 
had shown me. He cautioned me to keep 
always to the White Water Canon and never 
to venture in the opposite direction, where the 
trails led to the San Carlos Reservation. 

The party including my people started for 
the mines one morning at daybreak, and I was 
left to my own resources and inventions — and 
those of Diablito — for two long weeks. I 
straightway became acquainted with every 
man and woman in the settlement, and I 
used to listen for hours, in a state of mingled 
86 





DIABLITO 


awe and delight, to the stories they told me 
of their wild frontier life, of their adventures 
with the mountain lions, and of the horrors of 
the former raids of the Apaches. 

One day Diablito had taken me up to the 
little lake in the White Water Canon, where 
I spent the day in fishing and talking to the 
burro, who was really a very jolly comrade, 
and who, delighted by my laughter, continued 
to amuse me by rolling over in the grass like 
a young monkey, then suddenly flinging his 
legs in the air like a donkey at a circus, or 
braying like a foolish coyote until the woods 
rang with the echoes. Mrs. Harrington had 
strapped a box of luncheon at the back of the 
saddle, and the burro made his dinner of 
the gramma grass, which grows thick in those 
mountain ways, and of those tiny, sweet, nut- 
like seeds burros love. 

The afternoon was well advanced before we 
thought of starting for home, and as we came 
in sight of the settlement the sun was set- 
ting. Our first view of the houses was to be 
had from the summit of a hill near the settle- 
ment, whence the trail led down a slight 
declivity into a hollow, where the houses were 
87 


DIABLITO 


again lost to view until we should arrive on 
the top of the second hill. As we reached the 
summit of the first hill Diablito paused an 
instant, then quickly uttering a low, sharp 
bray and thrusting up his ears, ran like a 
deer down the hill, where he stopped short, 
refusing to take another step. He was trem- 
bling with excitement, and I, hearing piercing 
screams, and loud, confused noises echoing 
strangely from the hill beyond, concluded some 
unusual celebration was taking place among 
the settlers, and, remembering the old-time 
stubbornness of Diablito, believed it was a 
trick of his perverse mind to keep me out of 
the fun. Then did I begin to coax and pet, 
and attempt to inveigle him into going up the 
hill with me, and finally gave him, as bribe, my 
last lump of rock candy, which I had been 
saving for his reward at the end of the jour- 
ney. He munched the candy in an absent 
way, and remained immovable, without, how- 
ever, a suggestion of stubbornness in his 
silent pose. The large eyes were bright and 
restless, and his head turned uneasily, as if he 
was standing on guard. Believing that his 
former perversity had returned, I resolved to 


DIABLITO 


lose no more time, but to dismount and run 
up the hill, leaving the burro to follow when 
his conscience and hunger should send him 
meekly home. 

As I started to run up the hill, he wheeled 
around before me and, with his soft little nose, 
pushed me to the ground and attempted to 
hold me there. I managed to get away from 
him, but, before I could run, he pushed me 
down again. Then I realized that he had de- 
cided not to allow me to go on, until the spirit 
should move him to carry me. Screaming 
with anger, I clambered to the saddle, and 
wished from my heart that the former owner 
was on the spot, with his bad names and his 
swear words. I had tumbled into the saddle 
boy-fashion, and before I knew what had 
happened the burro made a quick bolt up the 
hill, but not in the direction of the house. 
When we reached the top of the hill I looked 
over my shoulder, in the direction of the set- 
tlement, hoping that some of the men would 
see my predicament and make an effort to 
rescue me from the flying burro. My aston- 
ished eyes fell upon a swarm of Indians run- 
ning swiftly from one house to another, 
89 


DIABLITO 


whooping and yelling. The entire upper 
part of their bodies was naked and hid- 
eously painted, and their long, coarse black 
hair was flying wild and loose in the wind. 

A blaze burst out in the midst of the yelling 
mob, and I, too ignorant of danger to feel 
alarm, should have been highly delighted to 
rush straight into the exciting scene and add 
some of my own yells to the commotion. But 
with the speed of the wind, the burro, with 
his ears lying flat, hurried himself and me 
away. Desperately I clung to the saddle as we 
flew along dizzy mountain trails in the dark- 
ness, only a wan starlight showing weird 
glimpses of the deep descents, where there 
seemed not an inch of solid ground beneath 
us. By a short but horribly dangerous cut we 
reached the trail that led to another settle- 
ment about three leagues from Harrington’s. 
I was weary and frightened and shaken almost 
breathless by the wild, fierce ride, when we 
finally rushed into the strange settlement 
called Deep Wells. There is no twilight in 
that region ; when the sun sets darkness falls 
suddenly, like a black wave, over the clear 
world. The darkness had fallen upon us in 


DIABLITO 


the mountains, and we had been flying through 
it, as safely as in the white of broad daylight. 

The moon was rising as we reached the 
settlement, and in the flood of soft light I dis- 
covered about a dozen pale adobe houses scat- 
tered round a hollow square, in which was 
situated the deep well from which the place 
derived its name. Not a sign of welcoming 
light streamed from those ghostly windows, 
but Diablito required no light. He continued 
his flying run straight to a house somewhat 
larger than the others, and, when directly in 
front, stopped in his own sudden way by 
thrusting his hard little hoofs in the ground, 
while I slid over his head. He walked quickly 
to where I was sprawling on the ground, 
screaming and sobbing with fright and anger 
at my strange and — to me — incomprehensi- 
ble plight, and began to sniff impatiently and 
to prod me with his slim sharp nose, until I 
was forced to make a desperate effort to 
struggle to my weary little feet. 

The place seemed like the wraith or dream 
of a settlement, in the utter stillness, with the 
pale light falling on the still paler houses. 
When I knocked on the door before which I 


91 


DIABLITO 


had been so unceremoniously dumped, my 
frightened little thumps scarcely broke the 
stillness. I pounded as fiercely as my trem- 
bling hands could manage, but the occupants, 
lost in the first deep sleep of the night, were 
not aroused. The burro stood at my side, 
looking eagerly at the door and trembling 
with excitement. After waiting a few min- 
utes he suddenly backed around and, lifting 
his hind hoofs, began to kick on the door, 
making a terrible racket; nor did he cease 
until the occupants, three men, all wide awake 
by this time, threw open the door. They 
crowded forward, half-dressed, to find the 
meaning of the alarm. When they discovered 
the kicking burro one man began to swear 
and to call bad names, but another had caught 
sight of the trembling child, and their anger 
quickly gave place to surprise and anxiety. 
They took me in and, with many kindly as- 
surances, questioned me closely. I related 
the happenings of the day and all that I knew 
of the wonderful occurrences of the night. I 
apologized politely for my untimely visit, and 
pointing to Diablito, said : “ That burro was 

a little coward. When he saw the Indians 


DIABLITO 


dancing around the house, he started in a 
great fright and flew like a runaway deer over 
awful places. I could not stop him, and was 
too scared to slip off when he was running. 
So here we are.” 

The men, who had been listening eagerly, 
turned to one another with startled exclama- 
tions as I finished, and began hastily consult- 
ing together. In less than a minute two of 
them hurried out to give the alarm, leaving 
the old man to attend to my wants. I was 
sobbing with weariness, and muttering angry 
words against Diablito, whom I blamed bitterly 
for all the worry, when the old man said 
gravely: “The burro has saved your life, my 
child, and has brought the warning to us of a 
bloody Indian outbreak. It is to the prompt 
action of the burro, or more likely to his 
affection for you, that every settler in this 
valley will owe his life this night. The In- 
dians will be upon us before morning, and we 
should have been massacred in our sleep.” 

No time was lost in arousing the settlers, 
and in sending a man, on the swiftest pony, to 
alarm the other settlements along the river, 
while a Mexican was despatched to Fort 
93 


DIABLITO 


Thomas, to carry the news of the outbreak to 
the soldiers and to bring assistance. 

The old man found something for me to 
eat, and pointing to the rude settle covered 
with skins, told me to lie down and sleep. In 
less than a minute I had forgotten my woes 
in the deep slumber of weary, unconscious 
childhood. 

All lights in the settlement were carefully 
covered, and a few hours later, when the 
Indians surrounded the houses, making the 
night ring with their blood-curdling war 
whoops, they were met with an unexpected 
volley of deadly shots fired from dark houses. 
Many of the savages were killed. The fighting 
continued till daylight, when, with yells of 
anger and disappointment, they sprang to their 
ponies and began urging them, in terrible 
haste, toward the next settlement, where they 
had no idea the alarm had already been given. 

At the first bend of the trail their yells 
were drowned in the fire of a hundred rifles, 
from a detachment of soldiers. Not an 
Indian escaped. 

The men at whose house Diablito had 
dumped me, anticipating the attack of the 

94 


DIABLITO 


Indians, after feeding and watering the burro, 
had him brought into the house, where the 
little animal stretched himself on a pile of 
dried grass, which the grateful men had 
thrown on the floor, near the settle where I 
was asleep. During that night of peril and 
wildest confusion the slumbers of Diablito and 
myself were unbroken. 

The following day some of the men went 
to Harrington’s to find out the result of the 
raid there. Their worst fears were realized. 
The houses and outbuildings had been fired 
and not a life spared, save that of old Mr. 
Harrington, who had been hunting in the 
mountains and, returning at nightfall, had 
discovered the trouble in time to seek a hiding 
place in the rocks, until the savages finished 
their dreadful work. He was found crazed 
with grief and despair, and brought to Deep 
Wells, where the sight of me in safety made 
him sob with joy. 

A man was despatched immediately to the 
mines, with information to my father of the 
outbreak of the Apaches, and of my safety 
and present whereabouts. 

I was a great heroine in those days. To me 
95 


DIABLITO 


was given the honor and credit of saving all 
those lives; to me — the little, faint-hearted 
coward who clung, weak and trembling with 
fear, to the brave little beast, when we hung 
over precipices so high that I shut my 
eyes and screamed with terror. But Diablito, 
the burro with the bad temper, unholy 
past and dreadful reputation, had carried out 
his purpose despite the obstinacy of the igno- 
rant child, and had succeeded in saving her 
and others, despite her efforts to prevent. 

Diablito must surely have imagined himself 
in an advanced stage of the millennium. Every- 
body met him with kind words and caresses, 
and I brushed and combed and rubbed his 
shaggy hide, until it was silky and smooth 
as gray plush. Candies filled with nuts, those 
sweeties the Mexicans make, were showered 
upon me, the make-believe heroine, and 
promptly divided with Diablito. 

Immediately upon receiving information of 
the Indian outbreak and of my narrow escape,, 
my father hastened to Deep Wells, and at the 
earnest solicitation of the wife of one of the 
officers at Fort Thomas, who was an old friend 
of our family, decided to allow me to stop at 
96 


DIABLITO 


the Fort during the remainder of my visit. 
Before starting for the Fort I entrusted the 
burro to the people whose lives he had saved, 
knowing that he would receive from them all 
the tender care and kindly attention that ear- 
nest gratitude could suggest. It was clearly 
understood that no one should ride the burro, 
and that he should browse about the hills and 
do as he liked until my return, which I had 
firmly decided should be within a few weeks. 
The burro heard me impress upon my new 
friends all the careful directions for his comfort, 
and looked very wise as he stood with his ears 
straight up, in his alert and listening attitude. 
After I gave him a farewell hug, and a kiss on 
the white spot just between his big eyes, he 
watched me over the bars of the corral, where 
we had thought it best to confine him until I 
was safely on my way, and the far-away look 
in his dreamy eyes did not express the deep 
regret that had always brought a little sorry 
comfort to me when parting from the horses. 
I looked back over my shoulder to see if no 
droop of the expressive ears, no restless move- 
ment to break through the bars, might indicate 
a hint of sorrow at parting, but the deter- 
97 


DIABLITO 


mined little head had not stirred, and the 
expression of utter indifference had not 
changed. 

The morning following my arrival at Fort 
Thomas we were awakened at daylight by a 
horrible pounding — as if a hundred able- 
bodied blacksmiths had started a tattoo of 
anvils and hammers on the piazza — accom- 
panied by a hoarse braying, that started us 
from our morning sleep in wildest dismay. I 
laughed as I scrambled into my clothes, and 
was conscious of a little thrill of joy, for I had 
a secret conviction that my sweetheart Dia- 
blito had come to see me. We all rushed pell- 
mell to the piazza, and at sight of the burro in 
the midst of his announcing ceremonies, every- 
body laughed and declared that he was a won- 
der of intelligence and devotion, and he was 
petted and praised, but the dreamy eyes were 
unresponsive, and I perceived signs that I had 
learned to recognize. 

Diablito meant business. 

In vain the boys attempted to coax him to 
the corral where they would give him some 
breakfast. Whatever he sought, it was cer- 
tainly not breakfast. He refused to move. 

98 


DIABLITO 


I sat down on the steps and talked to him, 
but instead of listening in his usual interested 
manner, he began to nose me and push me 
about in dictatorial, impatient fashion. He 
evidently wanted a ride, so I mounted his 
shaggy back, without saddle or blanket, for a 
little run around the parade ground. At 
least, that was my intention when I straddled 
him, boy-fashion ; but Diablito had plans of his 
own, thank you ! The instant I was on, he 
laid back his ears and started to run, swift as 
a deer, along those dreadful mountain trails, 
up the dizzy heights and down the steep de- 
scents, never pausing for a minute of rest, or 
to allow me a long breath or a clear thought. 
Indeed, all my thoughts and efforts were given 
to hanging to the shaggy back, during that un- 
premeditated wild ride; nor did he stop till 
near midday, when he stiffened his stubborn 
little legs in front of the house where I had 
been staying at Deep Wells. There he 
dumped me, in his favorite fashion, by forcing 
a quick slide over his suddenly ducked head. 
He had quietly resolved not to be deprived of 
the first friend he had ever known, and as soon 
as convenient had come to fetch me back. 

99 


L.of C. 


DIABLITO 


He had refused to accept the smallest atten- 
tion from the kindly people with whom I had 
left him, and had kicked like a vicious donkey 
when kindness was forced upon him. 

I scrambled to my feet, weary, cross and 
hungry, and gave vent to my discomfort by 
scolding, and pounding the tough little back 
as hard and furiously as my small fists could 
pound ; but the dreamy look had returned to 
the soft eyes, and if he felt my blows, he cer- 
tainly gave no evidence. Doubtless his sense 
of humor was appealed to by my useless anger 
and by the bad names I invented for his bene- 
fit. My family finally decided that the burro 
and myself would be less trouble, if left to 
our own devices and trusted to take care of 
each other, during the remainder of my vaca- 
tion. So we continued to live at Deep Wells 
and to share impartially the affection of the 
grateful men and women there. 

When at last the time arrived for me to 
leave the mountains and return to school, the 
future of Diablito became a serious problem 
which I alone was obliged to solve. I asked 
the advice of the old man who had lived 
among the burros all his life, and entreated 

IOO 


DIABLITO 


him to think of the very happiest fate that a 
burro could imagine. He said: “To be taken 
out into the mountains and turned loose to 
graze in the gramma grass there, to hunt about 
for and chum with stray rovers of his kind, 
live the wild life of a free lance, and be his 
own master forever.” It seemed a fascinating 
existence, and I suppressed a sob of bitter re- 
gret that I was not a burro and could not 
wander forth of my own sweet will with Dia- 
blito. 

The old man also told me that when a burro 
has been given his freedom, no man on earth 
can take it from him. He is usually too wary 
to be caught, and if, by some rare accident, he is 
captured he will not allow a human being to 
mount or even touch him, so long as those 
hard little hoofs, directed by unalterable de- 
termination, have power to kick. 

When I had taken my departure Diablito 
followed, until he realized that I was entirely 
beyond pursuit. He understood the separa- 
tion was final, for when I explained it to him, 
with my little wet face buried in his shaggy 
neck, the great, soft eyes were sorrowful, the 
long, expressive ears hung down limp and mis- 

IOI 


DIABLITO 


erable, and neither of us ate a morsel of 
breakfast on the day of parting. 

My people took the burro up to the moun- 
tains and gave him freedom, which he accepted 
royally — the freedom he had earned by a 
noble and great deed. 


T02 


TWO STRANGE BLACK NARKS 


A STUDY IN FELINE HEREDITY 



,P in the heights, almost in the 
very heart of the Sierra 
Mountains, under the 
shadow of pine trees so 
tall their feathery branches 
seemed tangled in the 
clouds, stood a log cabin. 
Two hunters had built it for their home dur- 
ing the time they intended to remain in this 
wild region, while prospecting for gold and, 
incidentally, having sport in the woods. 
Game was plentiful — birds, squirrels, bears, 
and some deer. 

In their log cabin these two men lived, with 
their half-Mexican, half-Indian guide, who was 
an experienced hunter and trapper, and had 
lived in these mountains all his life. His 
name was Santos, and he knew all animals, 

103 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


perhaps best of all the wild beasts he loved so 
well to snare and kill. Oftentimes when we 
were sitting in the firelight at night, he would 
relate to us his strange and terrible adventures 
with those fierce woodland folk, until my eyes 
grew big with wonder, and my heart beat with 
fear at sound of the strange night cries that 
were borne to our ears by the wind. 

Those two hunters were my father and 
my grown-up brother, and they had sent for me 
to visit them in this wild place, true to a 
promise, made long ago, that I should go to 
them wherever they might happen to be dur- 
ing that particular Summer. A little log room 
had been added to the cabin, a room so tiny 
that even an unusually small girl of thirteen 
years almost filled the wee space. The bed, 
which hunters call a bunk, was a low shelf 
securely fastened to the wall, and the mattress 
consisted of a close, firm pile of tender sprigs 
of fresh pine, spruce and fir, all smelling sweet 
of the woods. Sometimes the fragrance stole 
into my dreams, and I believed myself in 
the forest, and heard the singingof wild birds, 
and all night long gathered strange flowers. 

It was not very long before I had 

104 


an ex- 






TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


perience of my own quite as remarkable, if 
not as terrible, as those tales of Santos. The 
men had four splendid hunting-dogs — fearless, 
well-trained retrievers — and to their fine ear 
and true instinct we owed much of our game. 
I had a small rifle and had been taught to 
shoot, and was allowed to accompany the 
party on many of their hunting expeditions ; 
but one day when the men went on a somewhat 
dangerous quest, after a wildcat, whose cries 
at night had of late sounded suspiciously near 
the cabin, and given a warning of danger not 
to be ignored, it was considered advisable to 
leave me at home. My father cautioned me 
not to leave the cabin, as wildcats might be 
lurking near and, when they found themselves 
hunted, guided by their wonderful instinct, 
might seek the spot where there was, for the 
moment, no danger. 

The dogs had gone with the men, all save a 
bull-mastiff, who had constituted himself my 
chaperon, guide and protector from the hour 
of my arrival, when I slipped from the back of 
the burro that had carried me safely over 
those dangerous passes, where no horse’s hoof 
had ever trod. 

105 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


Feeling greatly abused and humiliated at be- 
ing left at home in that hour of real danger, as 
soon as the men were well out of sight I 
seated myself on a fallen log not far from 
the door, intending to clean and load my little 
rifle and start out on my own account, if 
the men did not return before night. Sud- 
denly two sharp rifle shots rang through the 
woods, followed by a long, weird shriek, 
almost human in its terror. The same instant 
two small black cats leaped from the clump 
of evergreens beyond the cabin, and landed at 
my very feet, where they crouched an instant 
in paralyzed terror. Their narrow, yellow eyes 
were turned toward my face, and their sharp 
gaze held me motionless and silent for a 
moment, under the power of the strange mag- 
netism certain animals possess and know 
so well how to use. They were wiry and 
black as night, with fur the electric crackle 
of which I could hear as their slim tails 
twisted and curled. Gradually the sharp gaze 
of the sparkling eyes relaxed; the twisted tails 
lost the nervous curl and drooped straight to 
the ground. Slowly the cats crept nearer, 
their eyes still fixed upon me, but less malevo- 
106 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


lently. Had I wished I could now have 
moved or spoken, for their magnetic power 
was gone. Then came the sound of another 
shot echoing through the woods, and in a flash 
the two cats disappeared. I sprang to the 
bushes in search of them, but no sign or trace 
could I discover of the slim, lithe little creat- 
ures, so different from the round and fluffy 
kittens of domestic life. 

Soon the men appeared with the body of a 
huge wildcat that had been shot through the 
brain, and, as they discussed the fineness of 
the animal’s skin, I still sought what they 
meanly persisted in calling my “ phantom cats,” 
after they had heard my excited description 
of the uncanny strangers. All but Santos — 
he looked thoughtful. 

The following morning the men were to 
undertake a long hunting expedition, to be 
gone probably the entire day, and with great 
delight I made ready to accompany them. 
Before we were well out of sight of the cabin, 
I, who was lagging slightly behind the others, 
suddenly discovered those two black cats, as 
close together as Siamese twins, and so close 
to me that I felt their light stroke against my 

107 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


leather leggings as I walked. It seemed diffi- 
cult for the cats to walk. They made long 
leaps like a hare, and waited for me at the 
end of each bound. Even my childish anxiety 
to prove to the men the reality of my phan- 
tom cats did not tempt me to hasten, or to 
speak or attract the attention of the men in 
any way, as I felt certain it would be the sig- 
nal for the disappearance of the wild kittens. 

Santos, the half-breed, looked over his 
shoulder to see why I followed so slowly. 
Touching my finger to my lips for si- 
lence was sufficient command to the wary 
hunter. Without looking back again, he 
quietly gave a brief explanation to my father 
and my Brother Bob. 

A fine bird was startled from the thick un- 
dergrowth as the men passed, and whirred 
close to my face. It was a simple matter to 
bring it down, with even the unsteady aim of a 
child. With a scream the bird made a wild 
effort and disappeared in the thick chaparral. 
With leaps swift as twin flashes of black and 
blue lightning the cats followed the trail of 
the dying bird. Almost as suddenly they 
sprang into sight again, bearing the bird be- 

108 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


tween them, which they straightway dropped 
at my feet. A child's quick impulse to pet the 
cats for their good work prompted me to 
reach forth my hand to stroke them, calling 
them “ precious babies ” and other pet names 
that had found favor with my various families 
of cats and kittens. They glared at my hand 
in angry scorn, stretched back their mouths 
from sharp white teeth, with angry snarls; and, 
with sudden thrusts of their slim black paws, 
they left long, ugly, bleeding scratches on my 
bare hands. It was their emphatic method of 
teaching me, in the beginning, to take no lib- 
erties with them. Nor did they ever permit 
the smallest familiarity during all the days of 
intimacy that followed. 

The men were watching the unusual scene 
in amused silence, but wisely refrained from 
interfering. They had come to believe long 
before this that between myself and animals 
there was an understanding beyond their ken. 

All that day those cats acted as retrievers, 
and so quick and intuitive were they that no 
bird that drooped a wing, however slightly 
wounded, escaped. Squirrels and hares were 
also doomed, as no retreat was secret from 

109 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


those cats, who knew every hidden crevice of 
the woods as well as every hidden thought 
and intent of birds and beasts. Suddenly we 
became aware that the dogs were no longer 
with us. We noticed it with grave misgiv- 
ing. We were a long way from home, and 
danger from mountain lions, wildcats and 
other wild beasts was to be apprehended, and 
the dogs were powerful protectors, being keen 
of scent and eager to give warning. 

Santos, who was first to remark the absence 
of the dogs, looked grave, casting disapprov- 
ing glances at the cats, while Brother Bob 
gave a prolonged whistle, which was a sure 
sign of his perplexity. My father was dis- 
tinctly troubled, and with one accord we filled 
the woods with shrill calls and whistles; but 
no answering bark, no joyful, bounding re- 
sponse, relieved our anxiety. The echoes of 
our own voices alone rang back, wild and eerie. 
A happening of this kind had never occurred 
in all the experience of these hunters before. 
To be deserted by the dogs was surely an 
omen not to be taken lightly. 

The two cats were close together, with their 
yellow eyes darting glances of fury at Santos. 

I IO 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


He pointed to them. “ It’s them blamed cats 
the cause for it all,” he said, looking the small 
black offenders square in the eyes, who in 
return showed him their teeth, with ugly 
snarls. 

It was immediately decided to cut the trip 
short and make the best of the way home in 
the hope of finding the dogs at the cabin. 

Even Santos admitted that never had the 
game bags been so well filled, never had finer 
birds been bagged, nor so many squirrels and 
hares captured without a wounded one es- 
caping. 

As we drew near home and sighted the 
cabin, to our great relief the dogs came 
huddling to meet us, in a half-shamed, 
sullen way. They cringed slightly as the 
cats shot past them, with slim tails thrust 
upright, evidently despising the dogs, upon 
whom they wasted neither look nor thought, 
as they bounded disdainfully through the 
open window of the cabin. 

From that day it was clearly understood 
that the dogs refused to go where the cats 
went, utterly declining to enter into rivalry 
with the subtle little animals who had “ the 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


insight of Satan,” as Santos expressively de- 
clared. I have frequently witnessed bitter 
animosity between cats and dogs, but this 
antipathy was strangely, unnaturally intense. 

Santos told us the mysterious history of 
the cats. Some years before a man had 
come to these mountains to prospect for 
gold. His wife came with him, and they 
brought many of their household things from 
the valley, a long distance off. A splendid, 
great black cat had followed them all the 
weary miles, and the love between the cat 
and her mistress was very great. Within 
a year the woman died, and her husband im- 
mediately departed from the mountains; but 
the cat did not follow. She could not be in- 
duced to leave the poor cabin where her 
mistress had lived, but cried continually day 
and night, refusing to accept a home or even 
food from any of the neighbors, who would 
gladly have cared for the true-hearted animal. 
One night the cries of the cat ceased. She 
disappeared and was never seen or heard of 
again. 

Santos declared that the wildcats had heard 
her cries of grief, and had called to her and 


12 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


stirred to life some strain of wild blood within 
her. She had gone to their call and found 
the comfort no man could give, in her hour of 
bitter sorrow. She had become one of them, 
casting her lot with theirs forever. 

All this had happened long ago, and San- 
tos said that the two little black devils — he 
always used strong words when vexed — were 
the offspring of later generations of this faith- 
ful old cat, and that their wild blood was mixed 
with gentle blood. When danger menaced the 
desperate wildcats the day the men followed 
to kill them, these youngsters, guided by weird 
instinct inherited from their domesticated 
ancestor, sought refuge with the civilized. 

My heart went out to the fiery little de- 
scendants of the grand old cat whose love was 
so true, but my affection was taxed to the 
utmost ; and had it not been for the sake of 
that true old ancestress, I am not sure that I 
could have relinquished so many pleasures 
as my devotion to their cause demanded. 

The dogs stubbornly refused to go hunting 
if the cats went, and the cats, with diabolic 
cunning, furiously refused to leave me, real- 
izing perfectly that in my presence alone lay 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


their security. Santos declined to go hunting 
without the dogs, and my father and Bob 
would not hear of going without Santos. It 
was really a very serious state of affairs, and 
fierce war was declared on the spot. 

In the end the cats won. They always 
won. Our faces and our hands were bitten 
and scratched — the face of Santos was a sight 
— all from our combined efforts to shut the 
cats up in the cabin when we went hunting. 
It would have been as easy to lock up a blast 
of the north wind. On one occasion we im- 
agined that we had succeeded, as the windows 
and the doors were all closed and the cats safe 
inside. But before we were out of sight of 
the cabin they were leaping merrily at my 
side. 

This eventually led to my being left at 
home from long hunts, and at those times 
I passed the entire day scolding and be- 
rating the cats, a proceeding that they 
dearly loved. They frankly evinced their de- 
light by leaping into the air, joyously, when I 
stamped my foot and screamed with anger. 

My most serious thoughts for many a day 
were devoted to the naming of those cats. 
114 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


They were vicious, hard-hearted, quarrelsome 
little wretches, and no name seemed sufficiently 
dreadful. I finally decided upon one I thought 
might do — the name of the only bad boy I 
knew. It was the lad who killed the thrush 
with the slingshot and snared the meadow 
larks. His name was Mark, which to my 
childish mind suggested all that was sin- 
ister on earth, and would therefore be appro- 
priate for one of the cats. Being at loss to 
evolve another name equally bad, I at length 
concluded there was enough wickedness in 
that one boy to supply both cats, and named 
both Mark. They became known far and 
wide as the two Black Marks. 

Wicked and unlovely as they were, these 
two Black Marks had their redeeming trait 
of honesty. The most delicate bird that had 
been shot was brought to us with conscien- 
tious promptness, even when their little black 
mouths watered with longing. The cats were 
superior to all save one small temptation. This 
was a tiny bird that fed entirely on the pine 
nuts, and became so fat and tender that, when 
shot, the delicate breast frequently burst from 
the shock of the fall. We noticed that often, 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


when one of these birds fell, the Black Marks 
remained suspiciously long in the underbrush, 
apparently without finding the bird, reappear- 
ing later in royal good humor. For this 
slight offense we could not find it in our 
hearts to punish, or even censure. 

It was remarkable how bravely they lived to 
the rigid moral code they had marked out for 
themselves — a code arising from an innate 
sense of right and justice, without a hint of 
precept or teaching. 

When the time arrived, all too soon, for my 
departure, the long Summer vacation having 
ended, I was more than glad that the two 
Black Marks had never permitted me to love 
them. Indeed, I was distinctly grateful to 
them for all the trouble and disappointment 
they had been instrumental in causing me, 
which made it no great heart-wrench to 
part from them. I required no added sorrow 
at that time. My heart almost broke; to bid 
farewell to the wild, free life of the mountain 
top and to those men who treated me as one 
of themselves, and who never reproached me 
for being a girl. 

The night before my departure, Santos, with 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


a furtive look at the two Black Marks, who 
were stretched on a bearskin at my side, de- 
clared they were muy diablos , and bad luck 
would come to the camp that protected them. 
He insisted that they possessed a strange in- 
sight which only the Evil One could have 
bestowed and which no mortal could under- 
stand. There may have been a grain of truth 
in the latter statement, as the little imps were 
perfectly well aware of what was working in 
the mind of Santos at that minute. It was 
his firm intention to shoot the cats as soon as 
I had gone. 

The following morning, the cats, for the 
first and probably the last time in their lives, 
were upon the verge of displaying a hint of 
the affectionate nature of their ancestress. 
They sprang to my shoulders as I was pack- 
ing my bag, both uttering low, strange cries, 
which sounded like a mingling of purrs and 
snarls, as they rubbed their smooth heads for 
the briefest instant against my neck, and gra- 
ciously forbore to snap at my ears or scratch 
my face. Then followed two dizzy flashes 
through the window, and the Black Marks 
had disappeared from my sight forever. 


TWO STRANGE BLACK MARKS 


Only the memory is left to me of those 
two weirdly beautiful bodies, with blue- 
black coats like finest satin, with sharp- 
pointed scarlet tongues and yellow, gleam- 
ing eyes, from which flashed sharp hints 
of the cruel, wicked nature of the wildcat, 
tempered ever so lightly with the gentleness 
of the dear old cat who was, in all probability, 
their great-great-great-grandmother. 

The memory of their honesty and loyalty 
will live in my heart forever, with many a 
tender thought of the trust so frankly reposed 
in my good faith, in the hour when a loaded 
gun was in my hands, when bullets were 
flying through the woods and the sound of 
shots was mingled with the death-shrieks of 
their kin. 

Their scratches and bites I have long ago 
forgotten. 


1 18 


BEAUTY 


A DOG WHO HAD A MISSION 



gYj*EAUTY was a mongrel and 


H, skin deep.” 


This dog’s beauty struck 
clear and luminous to her 


had a mission. It was to 
disprove the time-honored 
adage that “ beauty is only 


very soul, and, say what you will, this mon- 
grel had a soul, a beautiful soul. 

Her mother was a Skye and her father a 
bull-terrier, but Nature, being in a freakish 
mood at the time of Beauty’s birth, made her 
in the form of a miniature greyhound exqui- 
sitely carved out of rare old ivory. 

When one she loved was ever so faintly 
grieved, she would thrust her tiny cold nose 
into his hand and, with great brown eyes wet 


BEAUTY 


and glowing with affectionate sympathy, 
mutely say: “ Your sorrow is mine, because I 
love you so ; ” and Beauty really said it, for she 
had a language, exquisite and subtle, which 
spoke direct to the heart, and which was 
easy to understand. 

Love and sympathy were incarnate in 
Beauty, and sprang like flowers from her sen- 
sitive nature, that seemed perpetually watered 
with tears of misplaced affection. I have 
seen real tears, great, sorrowful tears, gather 
in the beautiful eyes and fall, so surely as I 
have seen them fall from the eyes of a sor- 
rowing woman. 

One Summer, Beauty had two exquisite 
puppies. They were born beautiful and, like 
the rose, “ they grew in beauty day by day.” 
Beauty’s unselfish devotion to her young must 
have suggested a grand lesson to the thought- 
less women, who swung in their hammocks 
and marveled at the unwearying care and will- 
ing labor of this mongrel mother. 

When these young Beauties were old 
enough to trot about, they insisted upon join- 
ing the other dogs who followed the men in 
their hunting and fishing expeditions up into 

i20 




BEAUTY 


the mountains. It was a phenomenally hot 
Summer, and when the party returned, ex- 
hausted and faint with heat and dust, the 
other dogs would lag wearily with tongues 
hanging out and never a thought of anything 
save their own discomfort. But Beauty, 
more desperately worn than the rest — she was 
a fragile, tiny creature at best — with never a 
thought of herself, would straightway marshal 
those grimy infants to a small trough kept 
for the dogs, and after the youngsters were 
well drenched with the cold mountain water, 
and were stretched out in luxurious abandon 
on the cool, deep grass, with never a thought 
of their dirtiness, this weary, tiny mother, so 
clean and dainty at heart, would proceed to 
brush and caress the thoughtless puppies un- 
til their smooth skins shone like clean satin. 
Then she would stand and gaze at them with 
ineffable pride and love, for a minute, before 
making her own dainty toilet in the little pool 
fed with water from the trough. Not for 
worlds would Beauty have taken a dip in the 
cool, moss-lined trough itself; nor would she 
allow her less dainty children to do so ; on that 
point she was firm. When her smooth, ivory 
1 2 1 


BEAUTY 


skin shone with its accustomed splendor, she 
would look up at the members of the family 
whom she loved, for the caress and word of 
greeting that constituted all of the affection 
and tenderness that found its way into her 
little, anxious life. Then she would drag her 
wee, weary self back to those big babies and 
stretch herself out beside them to sleep, not 
with their stupid oblivion, but alert and watch- 
ful, springing up at the faintest sound, and 
keeping patient guard even while they 
dreamed. 

The following Summer, when I went into 
the country to Beauty’s abode, these puppies 
had grown into splendid specimens of dog- 
hood, and looked down upon their tiny mother 
with alternate patronage and protection, as 
their mood suggested, but with never a gleam 
of that human, almost divine, affection that 
streamed from the beautiful eyes of their 
mother. 

One day a huge rock that had been loos- 
ened from the mountain side by the heavy 
rains fell, silently and swiftly, from an almost 
perpendicular height, over the spot where the 
dogs were lying. The youngsters escaped un- 
122 


BEAUTY 


hurt, but the rock grazed Beauty, and one leg 
was fractured. 

We set in splints the tiny bones, and every 
man, woman and child on the place exerted 
kindliest efforts to make easier the days of 
Beauty’s sufferings; but although she looked 
the sweetest, deepest gratitude for every small 
attention, there was a pleading, pathetic 
yearning in her great, true eyes which brought 
tears to those who loved her. 

Not a hint of the pain she must have suf- 
fered did she ever give. Beauty was too proud 
and too great for that. No Spartan ever rose 
above pain more grandly than did this dog. 
Not once did she wince, not once did she 
moan. Beauty’s sorrow lay too deep for that. 

One day a very tiny girl, with sweet, grave 
eyes and wise, true heart, said : 

“ Would the sorry look go out of your 
face, Beauty, if your babies would come and 
kiss you? ” 

Then a glad, human light beamed where the 
pitiful yearning had been in Beauty’s eyes, 
and the wee form quivered with joy. 

The cubs were brought, and Beauty’s eyes 
grew large with human expectancy and love. 

123 


BEAUTY 


They trotted over to where she was lying, 
and looked down at the prostrate, pain-racked 
little figure, but with no hint of sympathy or 
love. They thrust out their pink tongues, 
gave hasty, careless little licks at the small 
face, then scampered off at sound of a whistle 
from a farm boy they loved, who used to beat 
them right royally whenever the spirit moved 
him. 

You see they were only brutes, and their 
mother was akin to the angels. Beauty, how- 
ever, was satisfied. As with all great natures, 
her devotion was sublime. It gave much and 
asked little. 

After that, Beauty was never quite up to the 
long tramps with the dogs, and we saw more 
of her. But while human companionship and 
love meant much to her high-strung nature, 
she had one great quality developed, as it is 
rarely developed even among humans. This 
was the maternal instinct, which becomes 
divine when it yearns only for a creature to 
love and make sacrifices for, and asks in return 
nothing, absolutely nothing. 

In the hour of Beauty’s deepest tribulation, 
her tender, unselfish heart knew the anguish 

124 


BEAUTY 


of misplaced affection and base ingratitude, 
as surely as ever did human heart. It hap- 
pened in this way. For several weeks, long 
after she had recovered from her accident, 
Beauty had been living mysteriously in a 
little old laundry, some distance from the 
house, which long ago had been aban- 
doned in favor of a nearer, new and 
more commodious structure. One day we 
decided to investigate Beauty’s doings. We 
found in an old willow clothes basket various 
handkerchiefs that had been dropped or left 
in hammocks, soft old napkins, a discarded 
golf cape, and various old odds and ends, 
all disposed, with a nicety that would have 
done credit to more practised hands, into 
a bed, or rather nest, of tempting possibilities. 

The yearnings of motherhood were strong 
within that little breast, and we had not the 
heart to disturb the preparations that, we felt 
sure, would end in cruel disappointment. 

The long Summer days passed, and Beauty, 
whose work was done, spent her nights and 
many of her days in the little home that 
she had made, waiting with a patience that 
deepened into pathos. The beautiful eyes 
T2 5 


BEAUTY 


grew wistful and sad, but no hint of hopeless- 
ness or despair ever told us she had lost faith. 
I believe if she had lost faith it would have 
broken the brave little heart. 

One morning the farm boy, Billy, came to 
the veranda where we were sitting, and where 
Beauty lay stretched beside a small boy she 
loved better than anything on earth, save her 
own unfilial youngsters. Billy bore in his 
arms a wee pink pig, that he said was the weak 
little sister of a strong, lusty lot of piggies 
that came the night before. The others had 
trampled on her and had pushed her away 
from the mother, and had hurt her so badly, 
and she was so little and delicate, that Billy 
feared she would die. 

He asked if he might get an old nursery 
bottle out of the attic ; the mention of this 
brought a blush to the freckled face of the 
small boy Beauty loved. That nursing bottle 
and a cradle and a high-chair were indelicate 
reminders of an infancy this small man was 
valiantly struggling to live down. 

The bottle was found and filled with warm 
sweet milk, that the tiny pig languidly tasted. 
Piggy, bottle and all were then stowed away 
126 


BEAUTY 


under the kitchen porch, a cool, safe spot, 
where many an ailing bird and beast had been 
coaxed back to life. 

A few days later Billy came to us again, 
saying the pig had disappeared, and there was 
genuine sorrow in the kind, homely face when 
he declared his conviction that the dogs must 
have got it 

Immediately all kinds of mysterious things 
began to happen. Bessie, the maid, informed 
us that Beauty had gone back to second 
childhood because she would drag Master 
Bob’s old nursing bottle, by the bit of rubber 
tube, into the kitchen ever so many times 
a day, and when she had pestered Bessie into 
filling it, would drag it out of the door, and in 
less than no time would drag it back again to 
have it filled once more. “ And divil a bit of 
flesh does it put on the poor dog’s bones,” 
declared Bessie. 

Indeed, Beauty was becoming a very skele- 
ton, and a greedy one at that. She came to us 
at luncheon and at dinner, begging, demand- 
ing cake, bon-bons and every dainty bit that 
in former times she had accepted always with 
delicate courtesy and with a look of love and 
127 


BEAUTY 


a kiss, light as the falling of a flower, on the 
hand that gave. Now she simply grabbed 
the dainty in a greedy way and carried it out, 
dragging her wearied, worried little body pain- 
fully, with a brave determination we could not 
understand. 

One day a man who loved dogs was visit- 
ing us, and he struck consternation to our 
hearts by saying: “That little dog will not live 
unless you feed it. It is starving to death.” 

Then the small boy began to watch Beauty, 
and the next day he called us to the old 
laundry. There, in the basket-bed, was a 
healthy, rosy pig, about a month old, clean 
and fresh as a flower. Beauty was standing 
over it like a tender shadow, her great eyes 
sparkling with love and pride and ownership. 
The pig gave an ugly grunt and a vicious 
thrust of her pink snout at Beauty’s face, who 
painfully, patiently, climbed over the side of 
the basket and started for the food the young 
beast had evidently demanded. 

Beauty saw us, and stopped spellbound, 
with all the emotions that would have stirred 
a human heart brought to bay — fear, sorrow, 
supplication, divine in their pathos. 

128 


BEAUTY 


For this she had starved herself, had been 
maligned and misjudged, had been called 
“ greedy and ungrateful,” had been struck by 
hands she loved because of her tiresome im- 
portunities. Her sensitive little frame had 
shivered with the pain of it, and her true 
little heart must have known the refinement 
of suffering; but the one great duty she had 
set herself to, the mother-instinct had made 
sweet. Yearnings of maternity had made joy- 
ful the taking of that wee brute to her heart ; 
all the sacrifices and the absolute self-abnega- 
tion were sweet to be borne for that love’s 
sake. 

I took the pitiful, worn little frame up in 
my arms, and told her, just as I should have 
told a woman, that she had saved the weak 
little life and made a great, strong creature of 
it, capable and anxious to fight for itself; 
that in kindness to it we must give it back to 
the real mother. At this Beauty winced, and 
caught her breath with a sob so human, I felt 
a lump rise in my own throat. 

The small boy lifted out the vicious, strug- 
gling pig carefully and tenderly, because 
Beauty was watching with fear and jealousy. 

129 


BEAUTY 


We went to the big, clean pig-pen up on the 
side of the mountain, and put the rosy little 
brute where it belonged, with half a dozen 
healthy, rollicking brothers and sisters and a 
great fat, stupid mother. 

Beauty’s pig gave a grunt of satisfaction 
and tumbled right into their midst with every 
sign of gladness at unwonted freedom. She 
was larger, stronger and handsomer than 
any of the brothers and sisters that had 
trampled on her when weak. Well might this 
be, for she had fared on the choicest dainties in 
the land and reveled in daily bottles of richest 
cream, that we fondly believed were Beauty’s 
portion. 

Yes, Beauty’s pig was queen of the pen ; 
and well they knew it. Even the big stupid 
mother looked up and grunted something of 
welcome, which sent the newcomer in grunting 
delight to the maternal side and — to supper. 

Then, with a cry of jealous despair, Beauty 
leaped from my arms and, with a wail of 
wounded human affection and pain, flung her- 
self between the brutes. They rooted her 
aside with ugly grunts, and the small boy 
rescued her. 


130 


BEAUTY 


We carried her away, her little form trem- 
bling and quivering. 

We forced Beauty to drink her milk, and 
kept careful watch for a few days, until 
a little flesh began to cover the wee, sharp 
bones, and a bit of elasticity came to the 
listless movements. 

Again, one day as we were dining, Beauty 
made her pleading appearance when dessert 
was served, and after that, regularly, were 
cakes, crumpets, tarts and almonds borne 
away. Curiosity prompted us to follow her 
once after she had succeeded in begging a 
sugared lady-finger from one of the children. 
Straight as an arrow she fled to the pig-pen, 
into the crowd of little grunters, and without 
a trace of uncertainty, made her way direct to 
the loved one. 

To anyone but Beauty there was no single 
trace left to distinguish it from plebeian 
brothers and sisters. The rosy softness of its 
flesh was gone, and the result of much root- 
ing and no washing was evident ; but the love 
in Beauty’s heart looked beyond all that, and 
was perhaps all the greater and deeper because 
she found the object so hopelessly demoralized. 


BEAUTY 


The pig seized the dainty at a gulp, then 
thrust its greedy, saucy snout into Beauty’s 
face for more. Before she could fly, obedient to 
the brute’s demand, the pig gave a vicious snap 
and bite, its small sharp teeth piercing the 
little ivory shoulder. 

Without a moan Beauty fell under the heart- 
less mob, that, realizing something was at their 
mercy, fell upon her like a pack of small 
wolves. In a few seconds we rescued her, 
bleeding and unconscious, but alive. 

By dint of careful nursing we managed to 
coax back a little of the old-time strength ; 
but Beauty’s heart was broken. Once more 
she returned to her old friends and listened with 
tender sympathy to their sorrows, once more 
she kissed away the tears from angry or sor- 
rowful little eyes ; but no quick bark of de- 
light, no joyful wagging of the small, pert tail, 
gave evidence that a moment of gladness or 
forgetfulness had come back to the little 
heart. 

One morning, when the ground was white 
with the first frost, Beauty had gone to each 
member of the family, one after another, for 
a caress, lingering perhaps longest with the 

132 


BEAUTY 


children, who hugged her with rough affec- 
tion. Then she disappeared. Later, when we 
wanted to feed her, she was not to be found. 

Since that awful ordeal she had never shown 
the faintest inclination to go to the pigs, and 
we long since had relaxed our vigilance, consid- 
ering it unnecessary to watch her ; but now, 
with fear and anxiety, we hurried to the pen. 

The pigs were allowed by this time to root 
about on the mountain side, and they were 
out when we reached the pen. But there, 
lying on the ground, trampled, mangled and 
dead, was all that was left of Beauty. 

With a spirit of sacrifice as supreme as 
ever sent a woman to the funeral pyre or a 
Spartan to torture, she had gone to her death 
— given up her life to her love. It was all she 
could do, and if trampling her to death meant 
one instant of rapture to the pig, it would be 
sweet to die. 

Beauty is not the only one of “ the eternal 
feminine” who has sacrificed life for an illu- 
sion — perhaps only one among unrecorded 
millions. But then Beauty was only a mon- 
grel, whose father was a bull-terrier and 
whose mother was a Skye. 

133 











































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































. 



















WOODLAND BANDITS 


BABY RACCOONS MOTHERED BY A FOX 



HE foxes, those lawless ban- 
dits of the woods, had been 
very troublesome one year 
in the mountains of the 
Alleghanies. Their depre- 
dations had become so se- 
rious that a large reward 
was offered by the authori- 
village for every fox killed, 
a powerful incentive to the 
farm boys as well as to the backwoods hunt- 
ers, and the woods rang with shots, which 
also, I grieve to say, brought down much in- 


ties of a certain 
The reward was 


nocent game. 

One evening, Billy, the boy who worked on 
our farm, returned from a long day’s hunt with 
not only a couple of fine large foxes, but also 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


a raccoon that he was carrying with great 
care. It had been accidentally shot and 
maimed, and Billy explained to the children, 
in a tone of sorrowful regret, that it was a 
mother raccoon, and that somewhere up in 
the woods, in their lonely home in a hollow 
log, a family of little ones would be heart- 
broken and supperless that night because of 
her absence. One of her legs was broken 
and one of her ribs was crushed. Billy put 
splints to the leg, gave the suffering animal 
some warm milk and made a bed of straw for 
her under the kitchen porch, trusting that 
with good care she might be able to find her 
way back to her children within a few days. 

The sharp eyes that followed Billy’s every 
movement were expressive of the pain and 
fright and anxiety that tortured the wild, help- 
less creature. She greedily thrust out her 
little human-like hands for the nuts we 
cracked, the pieces of cake and other dainties 
which the children fetched to her, and taking 
one thing at a time brushed it carefully with 
her other hand; then, instead of eating it, she 
concealed it under the straw of her bed. She 
was suffering too terribly in mind and body to 

136 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


think of eating at that moment, but her in- 
herent forethought and prudent anticipation 
of the hour of hunger to come prompted her 
to seize and hoard all that was offered. 

The raccoon seems an odd mixture of the 
monkey and the bear, and displays distinct 
characteristics of both. The hands, even 
more human in form than those of the mon- 
key, are infinitely more delicate and sensitive, 
and the expressive hands of this wounded 
mother were working with nervous haste, 
guided by the fierce anxiety stirring in the 
tiny brain for those at home. 

A sympathetic group of children had gath- 
ered around ; even the smallest of them un- 
derstood her crucial agony, and all our hearts 
went out to the young she longed for. 

The raccoon was not fatally wounded, and, 
had she been patient and allowed a little time 
for Billy’s remedies to take effect, without 
doubt she would have regained sufficient 
strength to make her way safely home within 
a few days. But the wild mother, whose 
heart was so full of love, had not a spark of 
patience, and found it impossible to endure the 
suspense of even that one night. When all 
137 


V/OODLAND BANDITS 


was quiet and she was conscious of being no 
longer watched, she limped away with fearful 
suffering, crossed the bridge that spanned the 
mountain stream, and managed to creep up 
the narrow trail, about a hundred yards beyond 
the bridge, where her strength failed and she 
lay down to die. 

Billy found her the next morning, and fol- 
lowing the direction she had taken, hunted 
all that day, listening for the cries of the 
hungry young raccoons, that would guide him 
to their home in some hollow log. Those 
woods were wide and the mountains high, 
and hundreds of hollow logs were found and 
searched, but among the hundreds was not 
the home of the sorrowing little family. 

Three days passed, and we began to believe 
that the foxes had eaten the little raccoons, 
and almost hoped that speedy death had over- 
taken them, rather than lingering starvation. 
But on the fourth morning Billy returned 
almost immediately after having started for 
his daily hunt, bearing in his arms a limp little 
raccoon, whose delicate fur was flecked with 
white and gold. Billy had found it on the very 
spot where the wounded raccoon fell dead. 

138 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


A nursing bottle was filled with warm milk, 
and when the little thing had tasted the first 
drop, the tiny, weird, brown hands grasped 
the bottle, and the famished baby drank every 
drop, hugging the bottle close to the soft, 
yellow bosom ; then the little wanderer turned 
over and fell asleep. 

The young raccoon lived and grew strong, 
feeding always from the bottle, baby-fashion, 
and becoming wiser, and cleverer, and hun- 
grier day by day. 

About two weeks after the little raccoon 
made its appearance, Billy, while out on a 
fox-hunt with some of the men, tracked to its 
home a wounded fox, that disappeared in a 
hole running under the ground, where a log 
had fallen so long ago that it had become 
deeply embedded in the earth. When the log 
was removed and the nest reached, the men 
discovered the fox-mother stretched beside 
four young foxes and two healthy little rac- 
coons, all nestled together in the strangest 
group imaginable. 

All hunters know that foxes are the sworn 
enemies of raccoons, scenting their nests in 
hollow logs with rare sagacity, and voraciously 

139 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


devouring young and old. Therefore the 
astonishment of Billy and the men was 
great to see these young raccoons not only 
the guests of the enemy, but foster brother 
and sister as well. The young raccoons 
were quite as healthy and plump as the foxes, 
and gave every evidence of having received 
impartial attention. The fox-mother had 
taken the starving little waifs of the woods, 
and with the milk due to her own young had 
nourished them, and, doubtless, with her 
mother love had comforted them. 

Here, in the hole of the fox, that bandit, 
that lawless robber of the forest, was some- 
thing mightier than the inherited enmity of 
ages. It was the protective tendency of ma- 
ternity, the divine impulse, that appealed to 
the fox-mother to take to her warm breast the 
starving little raccoons orphaned by their 
common enemy — man. These little strangers 
had doubtless strayed a long way in search of 
their dead mother, and evidently instinctive 
dread and terror of the fox had not yet awak- 
ened in the little yellow breasts. 

The first instinctive impulse of that fox- 
mother must have been to make a dainty 

140 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


supper of the trusting little enemies, but a 
strain of something grand and sweet in the 
animal nature, that one fine seed of divinity 
which God implants within the nature of 
every one of his creatures, had burst into ex- 
quisite bloom in the heart of the most loveless 
of all animals, the fox. 

There was a quick consultation among the 
men as to the wisest and kindest action they 
could take in the settlement of this strange 
family affair. 

One man said: '‘Oh, they are all right; 
those wild creatures know the best thing to 
do for themselves. Let us go and leave the 
wounded fox to look out for herself. She 
will see that the young ones are all right.” 
But Billy, who was well acquainted with the 
thoughts and impulses of animals, was a little 
sceptical. “ It is all right while they are 
nursing,” he said, “ but later, while the little 
raccoons still know only love and still have 
their innocent confidence in their enemy, the 
old mother-fox or some other fox will be sure 
to devour them. You see, a mother is a 
mother only a little while, but a fox is always 
a fox. I think it is wise to run no risk of 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


allowing these youngsters to lose their 
lives.” 

The wounded fox was crouching beside the 
young ones, and when Billy attempted to take 
the raccoons she stretched her mouth wide, 
showing both rows of her white, pointed 
teeth, and giving ugly barks as she snapped at 
Billy. It was difficult to get possession of 
the raccoons without killing the fox, and this 
they had fully determined not to do. These 
men decided that this fox-mother deserved 
her own life, as well as the lives of all belong- 
ing to her, because of the noble deed she had 
done. The impulse that moved the fox- 
mother to protect the little ones in the begin- 
ning prompted her to fight for them now, 
and before Billy had succeeded in getting both 
the raccoons his hand was badly bitten. 

A roomy house of fine wire netting had 
been made out in a corner of the barnyard, 
under the shade of a great chestnut tree, for 
that first raccoon — the little sister whose surer, 
more delicate instinct had started her on the 
trail of her lost mother that lonely night. A 
large barrel had been partially filled with 
straw for the young raccoon, and the children 

142 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


had covered the barrel with waterproof paint, 
so that it would be comfortable in rainy 
weather. To this fine home the other waifs 
of the woods were brought. 

All seemed very much at home and per* 
fectly happy from the hour of their arrival. 
Each raccoon had its own nursing bottle, and 
they were fed exactly like babies. It was very 
interesting every morning to watch those little 
brown hands of human shape stretched out 
for the freshly filled bottles, then to see each 
little raccoon nestle down in lazy content, with 
bottle firmly clasped in soft, yellow arms. 

One chilly morning in early Autumn Billy 
had taken out their bottles freshly filled with 
warm milk, as usual, when the raccoons, in a 
very rude manner, snatched the bottles and, 
without so much as tasting the milk, tossed 
them disdainfully over the fence. Then they 
folded their little brown hands over their yel- 
low breasts, pursed up their ugly, funny 
mouths, and looked Billy square in the face. 
It was their convincing method of informing 
Billy that their milk days were ended, that 
they were ready for nuts and meat — raw meat 
— and those things which their parents had 
H3 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


eaten, and their grandparents and all the rac- 
coons since the beginning of the world. 

The children gathered piles and piles of 
chestnuts with which to feed the dictatorial 
young strangers, who daintily took one nut at 
a time, brushing it carefully with the other 
hand before cracking it with the tiny sharp 
teeth, thus showing their suspicion of the eager, 
soiled little hands that had been patiently 
breaking loose nuts from burrs not yet opened 
by the frost ; or it may have been an inher- 
ited tendency in raccoon nature to brush free 
from soil or poisonous matter their gleanings 
from the forest. 

The door of the wire house was left open 
during the day, and the raccoons were at lib- 
erty to come and go as they pleased. They 
were not affectionate little creatures, and the 
children seldom ventured within the little 
door, as they were distinctly unwelcome. 
Moreover, when human hands not holding 
something to eat reached to take hold of the 
cunning little elfish hands, the wild guests 
gave smart slaps that discouraged further 
familiarity. 

It was not long before the raccoons began 

144 


WOODLAND BANDITS 


to venture beyond the farmyard in their daily 
scampers, at first oniy to the edge of the 
woods, returning home for food and shelter* 

But one day they wandered deep into the 
forest and never returned. Their wild instincts 
lured them to search for nuts and birds and 
wood mice; lured them to the hard life of the 
forest beast, where toil and freedom beckoned 
hand in hand, where enemies and unsuspected 
dangers lay in wait, but where their wild fore- 
fathers called to them from every singing 
breeze and every tempest blast. And who shall 
say that, as a penalty for deserting civilization 
in obedience to the voice of Nature, our 
dainty, fat and chestnut-fed young coons did 
not constitute a delicate supper for the very 
fox-mother who had given them shelter and 
food at her breast ? 

The fate of the little woodland folk is as 
mysterious as their ways. 


H5 










THE YELLOW TRANP 


A CAT SAVED FOR CIVILIZATION 



HE was only a tramp, a mis- 
erable, weary tramp of dull 
yellow, almost the color of 
the earth in the woods, 
and striped with dingy 
black. She was a tramp 
cat who had evidently 
traveled miles through the mountain woods 
in the chill of the early Autumn, guided 
by fine instinct to human companionship and 
possible protection. A colder reception was 
accorded her than even her human proto- 
type, the man tramp, would have received 
had he made a sudden appearance at that 
old stone house in the Adirondacks. It was 
a queer old structure, built nobody knows 
how long ago, of the loose stones that had 
H7 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


lain about on the mountain sides, and was plas- 
tered together in the rudest manner possible. 
The house had been turned into a hunting 
lodge by a man who had bought miles and 
miles of the forest land in order that he and 
his friends might go there year after year and 
be sure to find good shooting. 

This particular Autumn I was one of the 
guests, our party consisting of four women, 
including the hostess, and five men. 

One morning, when the frost was sparkling 
on the red and yellow leaves that covered 
the ground, and made a shining carpet stretch- 
ing under the trees as far as one could see, 
that starving, forlorn cat made its appearance 
at the kitchen door, and lifting dull, watery 
eyes, mewed a faint appeal for food to the 
man who did the cooking at the lodge. The 
man gave the cat an ugly kick that sent 
it spinning out into the evergreen thicket, 
where it fell as dead. The mistress of the 
house, who was a very young woman, was 
standing on a side porch, gun in hand, pre- 
paratory to starting for the daily hunt in the 
woods. She reproved the man sharply for 
his cruelty and ordered her maid to find the 

148 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


cat and, if it was not already dead, to feed and 
care for the poor beast, as it seemed cruel to 
allow any creature to starve at her door ; but 
she added that it should be shot or drowned 
later, as it would prove a terrible nuisance 
around the place. 

The maid rescued the cat, and I watched 
the weary lids open as the girl lifted it gingerly 
out of the bushes, holding it as far as possible 
from her immaculate white apron. 

She dropped the unconscious animal on the 
cold ground and fetched a saucer of cold 
milk, which she placed beside the cat. Chilled 
and almost lifeless, the poor creature became 
conscious that food was near and attempted to 
rise, but fell in the attempt, afterward raising 
its head from time to time in spasmodic little 
jerks. Being a guest, I did not feel at liberty 
to follow my impulse and snatch the little 
creature from the charity so grudgingly given, 
by people to whom a living cat was not half so 
important as a dead squirrel. I did not speak 
to the cat or address a single word to my 
hostess regarding it, but bravely suppressing a 
sigh, joined the other members of the party, 
who made their appearance at that moment, 
149 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


and we all started to the woods, where we had 
fine sport. When we returned, shortly before 
nightfall, I looked eagerly about, but no sign 
of the cat was to be seen, and as the hostess 
had evidently forgotten all about it, I decided 
to make no inquiries. The hostess would cer- 
tainly order the cat shot or drowned if re- 
minded of its existence, and I had rescued and 
befriended so many strange cats, and had been 
so hampered and bothered afterward, that I had 
quite determined to steel my heart in the 
future. It was difficult, I must frankly con- 
fess, to live up to that decision, as I under- 
stand, appreciate and love cats thoroughly, and 
above all, recognize the existence in them of a 
rare quality of subtle intelligence, which de- 
velops under adversity to an almost super- 
human power of divination. 

A few days later I was sitting alone on a 
fallen log, down beside a little lake not far 
from the house, where I had gone with an in- 
teresting book, when I suddenly caught sight 
of the stray cat. She was unaware of my 
presence, being busy catching fish. Crouched 
on a fallen limb that lay well out in the water, 
she waited, alert and patient, for the trout as it 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


leaped, when a lightning flash of her paw 
would strike the fish and clutch it with the 
sharp claws as with a cluster of steel hooks. 
The cat hungrily devoured one little victim 
after another and, when satisfied, darted off 
like a hare in the direction of the stable. 

I did not mention the occurrence to the 
other guests, as I believed the greatest kind- 
ness to the cat would be not to call the atten- 
tion of the hunters to her. She would have 
been harried almost to death, then put up as a 
mark to be shot at. This had been done a 
few days previously to a wounded red squirrel 
that, in a moment of mistaken confidence, hob- 
bled in agony to the lodge gates. 

One morning the cat calmly made her ap- 
pearance in the breakfast-room. A transfor- 
mation almost magic had taken place. The 
yellow, soiled, and dingy stripes were now 
clean and sleek, smoothed to almost golden 
brilliancy, in vivid contrast to the satiny black 
stripes sharp and strong as the streakings of a 
tiger. With the regaining of strength and 
beauty, the yearning for human companion- 
ship had awakened, and the consciousness of 
changed appearance had given her the sub- 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


lime confidence in herself so distinctly femi- 
nine. 

When I entered the breakfast-room she 
was sitting before the open fire of blazing 
logs, a picture of serene content. I stood 
watching her, silent with admiration and won- 
der, when the young mistress entered the 
room. 

“ However in the world did that vile cat get 
in ? ” she screamed, seizing the poker. The 
cat sprang up, startled, and looked around in 
a hunted way, but as all the windows and 
doors were closed, there seemed no hope of 
escape. She paused the briefest instant, then 
wheeled swiftly around, sprang straight to my 
lap, and thrust her head under my arm. The 
instant I became conscious of the touch 
of her warm body, I distinctly heard a purr, 
the eloquent purr of a cat at peace. For a 
moment I was speechless with wonder akin to 
awe. I had never spoken to the cat and she 
certainly had never seen me, yet in her hour 
of peril she flung herself into my arms. 

Some silent voice had sent her and, with a 
divination nameless and unerring, had whis- 
pered of the existence of a protecting love. 

152 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


“ This is a rare tiger cat,” I hastened to ex- 
plain to the irate mistress, “ and one of the 
finest I have ever seen. It is a priceless treas- 
ure, and its coming here is an omen of rare 
good luck.” 

I felt very like the prevaricating Saphira of 
the Bible, when I began the defense that saved 
the life of the Yellow Tramp ; but as I warmed 
to the subject I became eloquent, and began 
to believe some of my own inventions. The 
other guests suddenly discovered the re- 
markable beauty of the cat, and the young 
mistress, who had gradually become interested 
and mollified, deigned to pass her white hand 
over the golden stripes. From that day the 
Yellow Tramp had the freedom of the house, 
and was petted in a spasmodic way by the 
guests and made much of. She accepted all 
caresses serenely and seemed to bestow her 
affections impartially. She rarely came to 
me, and I purposely avoided showing her the 
slightest affection, or allowing an attachment 
to spring up between us. 

One morning, several weeks following the 
reconciliation, the Yellow Tramp lay stretched 
like a young tiger on the rug before the fire. 
i53 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


A cold, sleety rain was falling, but the yellow 
and black stripes bore no evidence of her wet 
journey from the barn. She was a picture of 
purring content. 

The young hostess burst into the room in 
a state of great displeasure. 

“ What do you think?” she exclaimed. “ I 
went to the stable to see that the horses were 
all right, and in the loft I discovered a nest of 
horrid, dirty little cats ! Immediately after 
breakfast I shall order the gamekeeper to put 
them in a bag and drown them. It is suffi- 
ciently annoying to have one cat about, and to 
feel that I shall be obliged to take the responsi- 
bility of finding a comfortable home for it, when 
we go away. It is extremely annoying,” she 
continued, almost sobbing with vexation. 

I watched the cat closely as her mistress 
was speaking, and noticed that at the first ex- 
clamation the purring had ceased. Then fol- 
lowed the bristling of hair and the peculiar, 
cunning glint in the narrow eyes, that beto- 
kens comprehension. The other members of 
our party appearing at that moment, break- 
fast was served, and I paid no further atten- 
tion to the cat. 

1 54 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


I had been to the barn very early every 
morning for the past three days to see those 
kittens, always selecting the time for my vis- 
its when I knew the mother had gone to the 
house for her breakfast. I was astonished to 
hear our hostess’s unjust description of the 
little family, as the kittens were extremely 
beautiful — save one that was small and very 
weak, scarcely able to lift its wee head. 

I had been seriously tempted to gather the 
little beauties in my arms and bring them 
to the warm house, and watch the joy of the 
mother at the recognition of the surreptitious 
little family by her own newly found friends. I 
had bravely resisted, however, not even touch- 
ing the fluffy little creatures, lest a slight caress 
betray my interest to the strangely intelli- 
gent mother. It was a distinct relief to 
me, the knowledge that the kittens were to be 
drowned, as it would be more merciful than 
to allow them to live, and become tramps and 
know the suffering that had beset their 
mother. 

It was a wild morning, the rain falling in 
sheets, and immediately after breakfast I went 
to my room, intending to write letters, as there 
i55 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


was no hope of going to the woods that day. 
I was comfortably seated before the cheerful 
open fire burning in the little grate, when I 
heard a scratching at my door. Opening it, I 
discovered the Yellow Tramp standing there 
with one of her handsome kittens firmly 
grasped in her mouth. She walked past me 
with perfect assurance, sprang to the fresh 
white bed, dripping and soiled as she was, and 
deposited the kitten in the very centre ; then 
she dashed out of the room like one possessed. 
In an incredibly short time she reappeared 
with another little one, that she deposited 
beside the first, and, disappearing still again, 
returned with the third kitten. All save the 
poor little ailing sister had been faithfully 
placed beyond all danger, and with placid con- 
tent the Yellow Tramp curled herself around 
the yellow and black plush kittens, whom she 
had licked and brushed to immaculate clean- 
ness. All were purring with placid enjoyment 
of my dainty bed, without so much as bestow- 
ing one glance on me. 

“You are a hard-hearted little beast, you 
Yellow Tramp ! ” I scolded, as I arranged my 
writing material. “You have brought your 
156 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


strong, handsome children away from danger ; 
but only a cruel mother would leave the poor 
little helpless child to die or be killed by the 
gamekeeper. I have a great mind to call him 
this instant and give you all up ! ” 

She had lifted her head and was gazing at 
me with perfect comprehension. Springing 
to the floor, she walked with great dignity to 
the door and waited for me to open it. I did 
so, taking care not to close it entirely, as I had 
become a bit weary of repeatedly opening the 
door at the summons of the Yellow Tramp. 

In a few minutes she returned, bearing in 
her mouth the tiny missing kitten, and dropped 
it at my feet, dead. With a swift glance of 
honest reproach into my face, she sprang to 
the bed, leaving the stiff little mite, which had 
evidently been dead several hours, lying before 
me. The act was a silent vindication, the 
look a sharp reproof. I was conscious of a 
distinct sense of shame for having distrusted 
the instinct of tender motherhood, even for 
a moment — that quality of motherhood 
which close observation has taught me is de- 
veloped to Spartan perfection in the cat. 

From that hour the Yellow Tramp placed 
157 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


her entire responsibilities upon my shoulders, 
devoting her own time and attention to the 
proper and exigent duties of motherhood. By 
bribing the maid I induced her to fetch an 
empty champagne basket, and with an old 
golf cape and a shawl we contrived a comfort- 
able bed for my unbidden guests, concealing 
the basket behind the dressing-case, which 
crossed one corner of the room. The maid 
replaced the soiled cover of my bed, and 
together we kept the guilty secret, feeding 
and caring for the kittens day after day, until 
they were old enough to be sent away to the 
comfortable homes I had managed to secure 
for them, among the country people there- 
abouts. 

The little creatures had become constantly 
more beautiful and more affectionate, and 
early in the morning, quite of their own 
accord, used to spring softly to my bed and 
nestle down at my side for a beauty sleep. 
Loving children could have betrayed no more 
delight than did those kittens when I entered 
my room. With cries of pleasure they sprang 
to my shoulders or clung to my waist, and 
when I forced them away, in order that I 
158 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


might proceed with my dressing, climbed up 
the sides of the mirror and sprang to my neck, 
with loving purrs and dainty baby ways 
that won me completely. When I found 
myself compelled to part with them my heart 
was heavy. My room was gloomy and des- 
olate as a tiny paradise with love banished, 
and, as I sat sorrowful the first night after our 
parting, I realized I was suffering cruelly once 
more through that fatal fascination. 

When at last our party was broken up, and 
all returned to the city, the Yellow Tramp 
accompanied me. She firmly declined to be 
separated from me, and I was forced to allow 
her to follow. I must confess to a secret sat- 
isfaction at this, as I had grown to love her 
and to have profound respect and faith in her 
strange intelligence, and untold comfort in her 
unselfish devotion to myself. She neither ex- 
pected nor cared for caresses, merely enduring 
them, and never did she approach me with the 
purring affection of an ordinary cat. She felt 
the influence of her homeless past during 
every hour of her new existence, and her con- 
sciousness that she was with us on sufferance 
seemed evident from her peculiar, non-assertive 
159 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


ways. When she could serve me in any 
manner, her eagerness to do so convinced me 
that gratitude, a rare trait in cats, was strong 
and deep in the Yellow Tramp. If I happened 
to drop anything she would spring to pick it up 
for me, and if a dropped article disappeared 
from view, as on one occasion did a ring, at 
another time a thimble, the Yellow Tramp 
could be depended on to recover it. The 
recovery of the ring was difficult, as it had 
slipped down back of the seat of an easy-chair. 

This was the first year of the Spanish War, 
and day after day I waited with feverish 
anxiety for the coming of the postman with 
letters from loved ones who had gone to 
Cuba. The Yellow Tramp plainly shared my 
anxiety and was always on the watch five, 
sometimes ten, minutes before the times of 
delivery, sitting patiently on the front steps, 
which were frequently covered with snow and 
ice, in weather so cold that even the homeless 
cats of the streets were not to be seen. Her 
joy at receiving those letters, which she 
seized in her sharp teeth, and in bounding 
to me with them, equaled my own at sight 
of them. 

160 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


The following Summer I went to Saratoga, 
where I had secured a cottage for the season, 
and the Yellow Tramp accompanied me. I 
remained until very late that Autumn, and one 
morning, when the first frost was on the 
ground and a sharp chill was in the air, 
I directed the servant, while we were at the 
breakfast table, to have the furnace cleaned 
for use, as a fire would be required that day. 
The cat, who was in the breakfast-room and had 
heard the order, followed the maid, who after- 
ward informed me that the Yellow Tramp had 
dashed around the yard to the open cellar 
window, where she suddenly disappeared. 

Immediately after breakfast I went to the 
cellar for the purpose of inspecting the heater, 
the door of which I found partly open. There, 
in the midst of the accumulated rubbish, was 
a nest of tiny kittens. The Yellow Tramp 
was also in the heater, and without paying the 
smallest attention to me, seized the nape of 
one of the little yellow necks and dashed swiftly 
up the cellar stairs. While I was still en- 
gaged about the cellar she returned for another 
kitten. Within a suspiciously short time she 
had removed them all, and I did not doubt 
161 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


that the new abode had been previously se- 
lected, as no time was lost in house-hunt- 
ing after she heard my order for fire. I 
remained in the cellar until the rubbish had 
been safely burned, then proceeded up stairs 
to find what part of the house had been ap- 
propriated by the lawless family. From my 
previous experiences with her yellow ladyship, 
I felt convinced that the choicest part of our 
residence was considered none too fine for her 
youngsters. My surmise was correct. 

In my dressing-room a cedar box was stand- 
ing open, and there, in the depths of a sealskin 
coat, nestled the Yellow Tramp and family. She 
glanced up approvingly as I entered the room, 
gave a purr of approbation, evidently intended 
to assure me that, as I had deprived her of the 
most desirable place in the house, she had 
taken possession of the next best place, which 
would do very well, so long as the yellow ba- 
bies did not object. 

I sent the maid to fetch a basket, and to- 
gether we removed the little intruders, the 
mother sullenly resenting the performance. 
They were deposited in a roomy clothes bas- 
ket in the warm cellar, but the Yellow Tramp 

162 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


had been deeply offended, and for many a day 
would not permit me to touch the kittens. 

Before our departure from the cottage it 
was sold to an old lady who adored cats, and 
with tears in her dear, old eyes she implored 
me to allow her to keep possession of the 
beautiful family of yellow cats. I tried to con- 
ceal my joy as I consented. Had she but 
known how glad I was to get rid of the dear 
little intruders — I was about to go abroad — 
she would have been spared all anxiety lest my 
overwhelming desire to smuggle the cats across 
the water should deprive her of seven addi- 
tions to her modest household. It grieved me 
deeply to part with the tramp herself, but as I 
was to travel for a long time, the prolific yel- 
low cat would be an embarrassing increase to 
my impedimenta. 

I have always felt grateful that it was in 
my power to thus provide a comfortable home 
for that interesting family, but I have often 
wondered why so many of the inscrutably 
wise actions of animals are recorded of mon- 
grels and of the lowly ones in life. Perhaps 
adversity best develops rare and sweet intelli- 
gence. The human law doubtless holds good 
163 


THE YELLOW TRAMP 


down in that other world. The petted, pam- 
pered ones require no keen insight, no subtle 
knowledge, in their downy existence, and 
Nature does not squander her gifts. 

During my visits to Saratoga in recent 
years I have never dared to look a cat in the 
face, on the streets, lest some Yellow Tramp 
spring to my shoulder, and in his mother’s 
name purr the relentless “ Nevermore ” of the 
“ Raven.’* 


THOR 


A BEAR WHO REMEMBERED 





^URING my second visit to the 
log cabin in the Sierra 
Madre Mountains, where 
I had encountered the two 
Black Marks, a great black 
bear was shot and her cub 
was captured alive and un- 
hurt. The cub, which San- 
tos brought to the cabin as a gift for me, was 
only a few weeks old, and his coat was fine and 
silky as plush. He was a surly, troublesome 
little bear from the very beginning, who sulked 
and grieved and refused to eat or drink unless 
coaxed and fed like a baby. At first he 
shrank from my caresses with sullen little 
growls, but before long came to demand the 
loving attentions to which I devoted my entire 
165 


THOR 


time, in the hope of reconciling the little 
stranger to his new surroundings. 

I had other protdgds at the time — wild 
creatures that I had found in the woods and 
saved from the hunters’ dogs, and taken 
home to nurse back to strength and freedom. 
Among them were a huge black eagle that 
had been blinded and had had one wing shat- 
tered by a careless marksman; a tiny gray 
squirrel with two broken legs, both in splints 
at this time; also one of the dogs, a fine 
retriever, that had been badly hurt by a falling 
tree. The bear desperately resented my care 
for these patient sufferers. He stood growl- 
ing and angry at my side as I hastily tossed 
food to them. I submitted to his surly ex- 
actions, because in the beginning he had re- 
garded me as his born enemy, and had been 
honestly loath to accept any favors at my 
hands. This had awakened every tender im- 
pulse of my childish heart, and I patiently en- 
deavored to prove my love and loyalty to his 
suspicious mind. 

I considered it a great condescension when 
the cub deigned voluntarily to drink the milk 
and the warm soup that Santos prepared, and 


THOR 


the measure of my joy was complete when 
I first heard his surly growl demanding 
more. 

We were all so pleased that the cub vouch- 
safed to accept favors at our hands, that we 
were well content to give him the lion’s share 
of all good things, and I laughed with joy to 
see the rapidity with which the little monster 
grew and became smooth and handsomely 
rounded. 

He not only became reconciled to my pet- 
tings and rough huggings — which at first he 
had endured as afflictions of civilization — but 
before long demanded these affectionate dem- 
onstrations. I was not a very patient little 
girl at best, and the time soon came when I 
grew weary of sitting out in the sunshine, 
hours at a time, day after day, running my 
hand with long, soothing strokes over the 
bear’s sleepy head — while he lay stretched at 
my side, listening with half-closed eyes to the 
thrilling tales of Fenimore Cooper, which I 
was in the habit of reading aloud to him. It 
was my firm belief, in those days, that solemn 
acquiescence lurked in the deep cunning eyes 
of the bear, when I assured him that he was 
167 


THOR 


listening to the stories of the greatest author 
in the world. 

He fairly reveled in those hours of lazy en- 
joyment, and on various occasions when I de- 
clined to go out to our usual haunt after the 
midday dinner, he resented it in true human 
fashion, by tagging me about wherever I went, 
uttering threatening little growls if I at- 
tempted to amuse myself in other ways, that 
completely spoiled my pleasure. 

The bear cherished for the eagle a deep and 
deadly hatred that later was mixed with 
much wholesome fear. One day he growled 
and sputtered at the eagle until she lost her 
temper and taught him a lesson. I was feed- 
ing the squirrel when we were startled by the 
sounds of mingled growls and screeches and 
sharp cries of pain, issuing from the evergreen 
thicket not far from the cabin. Santos and I 
lost no time in running to the spot, where we 
discovered the eagle with her strong talons 
twisted in the silky fur of the bear’s head, her 
sharp beak plucking viciously at his eyes. Had 
Santos not been there the bear would certainly 
have been killed, as my efforts to release him 
seemed only to infuriate the eagle, who — 


THOR 


seemingly helpless, with blinded eyes and 
shattered wing — had been excited to the 
strength of desperation. 

I named the bear Thor. My brother had 
been reading aloud to us a story of Norse 
mythology, and the name of this god of war 
and thunder seemed to fit the splendid dignity 
and power of the bear. I was firm in the con- 
viction that some time he would become the 
greatest wild animal on earth. 

Day by day he grew more haughty, cruel 
and exacting ; and when Santos, in his hearing, 
told me of other bears who, in households 
where they had become pets, seemed almost 
like trusted dogs, I have seen the sharp, cun- 
ning eyes flash looks of perfect hatred at the 
man who had courage to malign him. It was 
far from the nature of Thor to fill the role of 
household pet. His nature was too utterly 
selfish, his only redeeming trait being his perfect 
confidence in, and absolute loyalty to, those 
who loved him. He would exact caresses 
without ever pretending to appreciate or re- 
turn them. His jealousy was so great that, 
had his teeth been grown, he would undoubt- 
edly have attempted to kill me, when I gave 
169 


THOR 


food to the eagle or caressed the squirrel with 
the splintered legs. He was much like a human 
boy in that respect, and I, being a very small 
human girl, allowed him to rule and worry me 
to his heart’s content, devoting myself to him 
constantly without a murmur, and loving him 
desperately, despite his crossness. 

That Autumn in the mountains the storms 
set in very early, and, before my vacation was 
over, the trails along the steep passes became 
slippery and unsafe, and, landslides being of 
frequent occurrence, it was decided that I 
should not stir from the cabin until the 
weather became settled. Owing to these pre- 
mature storms I was fated to witness a won- 
derful phase of bear life and bear intelligence. 

One morning I was brushing the soft hair 
on Thor’s head, parting it on the side as the 
men wore theirs, when the bear turned his 
head toward me and deliberately yawned in my 
face. I discovered four sharp teeth standing 
like tiny tombstones in the waste of wide, pink 
gum. The cub was extremely proud, and 
graciously held his mouth open while I exam- 
ined them. 

That night, with great delight, I told my 

170 


THOR 


father of the discovery ; but the glance of grave 
intelligence exchanged between himself and 
Bob dampened my ardor and awakened a pre- 
monition of trouble. After supper, while we 
were sitting before the big fireplace that oc- 
cupied one entire side of the cabin, where 
huge logs were sending out dancing red light, 
the men told me that if I wished to keep Thor 
it would be necessary to have his teeth drawn 
as soon as cut ; otherwise, owing to his ugly 
temper, it would not be safe to leave me alone 
with him. 

The suggestion filled me with horror. I 
immediately decided never to let them subject 
the splendid beast to the indignity. Bob in- 
sisted that the only alternative was to take the 
bear back to the deep woods where he had 
been found, and there turn him loose to take 
his chances with his kind. With heavy heart I 
finally consented that this should be done 
within a few days. 

It really seemed the only kindness we could 
show to the bear, as we were going away 
from the mountains that Winter, and Thor 
would be virtually without friends. I was 
well aware that Santos distrusted him too 


THOR 


thoroughly to feel either love or toleration for 
him. 

Around Thor’s neck Santos had riveted a 
small steel chain, which, though fine and 
light, was strong. It was part of a long chain 
that I used as a leash for a huge bull-mastiff 
that I had brought for the men from my un- 
cle’s ranch in California. Santos had made 
the necklace for Thor, fitting it loosely, so 
that, when the bear was fully grown, it would 
not be necessary to remove it. 

Dismal as was the prospect of parting with 
the bear, I was secretly satisfied to have him 
go out into the world wearing my chain, and 
by it I firmly believed he would remember me 
forever. The sentiment of the latent woman 
was consoled to think that he was destined 
evermore to wear the token of my affection — 
only the affection of a child, to be sure, for a 
big black bear, but still the affection of as loving 
and sorrowful a little heart as ever beat. I was 
well aware that Thor’s love for me was sullen, 
jealous and altogether different from the gentle 
dependence that made affectionate slaves of my > 
other animals, whom I ruled with a look. But 
this knowledge did not make me love him less. 

172 


THOR 


The next morning the ground was frozen, 
and a light snow clung like a shining garment 
to the drooping branches of the trees. A dull, 
gray sky and a peculiar moaning of the wind, 
as it crept through the woods, foretold a fierce 
storm, of which the birds and the beasts had 
unerring premonition, as we knew from the 
weird calls and cries echoing drearily through- 
out the day. 

About four o’clock in the afternoon fine 
flakes suddenly flooded the air. I ran out into 
the blinding storm, looking eagerly through 
the white air in hope of catching sight of my 
father and Bob, who had gone beyond the 
clearing to set traps for mountain lions. The 
fragrance of the pine knots burning in the 
cabin, mingled with odors of rabbit pot-pie, hot 
biscuit and boiling coffee, blew past me, deli- 
cious and tantalizing, and was borne by the 
wind into the woods, to the caves and haunts 
of hungry beasts. 

My hand was thrust through the chain on 
Thor’s neck as we stood together in the snow, 
and he seemed strangely restless and uneasy. 
His low, nervous growls convinced me that 
something unusual was fretting him. He 
173 


THOR 


crouched to my side almost affectionately, and 
when at last I caught sight of the men and 
sprang to meet them, Thor followed in a hum- 
ble fashion entirely new to him. Hitherto he 
had always pushed me rudely out of the way, 
often knocking me down in his determination 
to reach the men ahead of me. 

Had it been anyone in all the world but 
Thor, I should have declared him scared, but 
Thor was the soul of courage, and there was 
no visible cause of alarm. I had not then 
learned that wild animals can perceive things 
utterly beyond human ken. To them is given 
a terribly penetrant sense that we do not pos- 
sess and cannot comprehend. Perhaps it is a 
mysterious working together of eye, ear and 
nose. We call it instinct for want of a better 
word. 

This mysterious sense informed Thor that 
the crisis of his life was approaching. After 
supper I was sitting on my father’s knee, Bob 
was reading aloud to us and Santos was in the 
act of putting a fresh log on the fire, when we 
heard, above the roaring of the wind, a loud, 
hoarse growl at our very door. We started to 
our feet ; the men stood silent and alert. The 
174 


THOR 


growl grew louder, and other growls and yells 
and snarls swelled the sound to frightful 
tumult. 

Thor was stretched at full length before the 
fire, on the skin of his mother. Quickly he 
scrambled to his feet, his eyes glaring and his 
body trembling with excitement. 

Santos, usually taciturn, never speaking in 
moments of excitement, acted with suspicious 
promptness. He dropped the log on the fire; 
then, opening the door of the kitchen, he 
looked at trembling Thor with peculiar mean- 
ing. With a bound the bear went through 
the door, which Santos quietly closed. 

My father held me a little closer and Bob 
moved nearer the fire. The noise and con- 
fusion outside increased. We heard the grat- 
ing sound of the door in the kitchen as it 
opened ; then short, excited growls from Thor, 
followed by the grating sound of the door as 
it closed ; then deeper growls, snarls and cries ; 
then a hurried tramping as of scattered, terrified 
beasts ; then silence, broken only by the fierce 
blasts of the wind and the groaning of the 
trees. 

Bob began reading aloud, doubtless to dis- 
175 


THOR 


tract my attention from events calculated to 
dispel all thoughts of slumber from the brain 
of a nervous, excitable child. I soon fell 
asleep by the fire. 

The next morning snow was no longer 
falling, but the sky was still dark and an icy 
wind was sweeping the drifted snow down the 
mountain side. It was the “ chinook ” wind, 
greatly dreaded by hunters and travelers. It 
means certain death to man and beast, unless 
they bury themselves in the snow or chance to 
find a sheltering cave. It is a fierce wind, 
formed when warm currents rising from the 
valley below meet the icy blasts that sweep 
over the snow-topped mountains. 

As we looked from the cabin windows there 
appeared no trace of the strange visitors ; snow 
and wind had obliterated their tracks. But, 
about a hundred yards from the cabin, darkly 
outlined against the evergreen thicket, stood 
Thor. His attitude was unfamiliar and weird. 
He would look in a strange, fixed way at the 
cabin a minute, then turn his head toward the 
woods, his shaggy figure trembling in the 
piercing cold. Santos nodded knowingly. 

“ What is it, Santos ? ” I pleaded. il Did 
176 


THOR 


Thor go with the bears, and has he returned ? ” 
I could feel my heart beat with delight in the 
hope that he had decided our love was the 
better. 

“ Umph! ” grunted Santos. “ Thor couldn’t 
stay when his tribe called. He went through 
the door like the lightning flash. Other 
bears scared at Thor and wouldn’t have him ; 
afraid of him. He not wild bear now — half- 
man, half-bear. Other bears not trust him, 
but afraid to kill him. Thor want to go — 
want to stay — love to stay — must go ! Poor 
Thor ! ” 

Santos took a rabbit from the shed where 
the game was kept and, splitting it in halves, 
flung it out to the bear, who stood with eyes 
strained and bloodshot, his jaw hanging down 
in a threatening, ugly manner. He made a 
frantic plunge for the pieces, fixed them se- 
curely in his jaws, then marched forth bravely, 
even joyously, in the face of the death-dealing 
wind. 

“ Umph ! ” grunted Santos. “ Thor all right 
you know now; he take hostage — peace 
offering.” 

We stood at the window watching the 
1 77 


THOR 


bear as he slowly disappeared. With my face 
pressed against the cold window I was making 
brave efforts to wink back the tears that blurred 
my eyes and to choke down the great lump in 
my throat. Santos was muttering : “ Strange, 
strange. Never saw bears do so before. 
Bears never run in packs, always alone ; some- 
times two together, but never more. Bears 
are not sociable, but many came together last 
night, and I don’t understand it.” 

I felt sure that the wild beasts had come 
to rescue Thor, but Santos said that the odor 
of the cooking had enticed them from 
different parts of the forest, and that the 
presence of Thor was probably a surprise 
to them. 

“ Santos,” I said, wonderingly, “ how did the 
bear know that to offer a gift is a sign of good 
faith ? Even we have to be taught that, when 
we are old enough to understand. Is it be- 
cause we are born ignorant and the bears born 
wise ? ” 

“ Mebbe,” thoughtfully answered the man, 
who had lived among wild animals all his life 
and knew strange and beautiful things about 
them. Santos had no imagination and had 
178 


THOR 


never learned to lie. One of these days I 
mean to write some of the tales Santos told to 
me, so that those who love the dumb, wise and 
honest forest folk may also look beneath the 
shaggy fur and stolid face and recognize the 
soul, that spark of God-like intelligence 
breathed by the Creator into every living thing. 

The breaking-up of that storm afforded us a 
chance of escape from what threatened to be a 
Winter of snowy imprisonment, and we all 
hastily departed to California, and none of us 
ever returned to the log cabin again. 

Fifteen years later — fifteen years from the 
very night when Thor went back to his people 
— I was sitting alone on the deck of a steamer 
bound for Germany. The night was dark, and 
rough weather had driven most of the passen- 
gers to the cabin. A party of men were sitting 
near me, snatches of whose conversation 
aroused my interest. Without attracting their 
attention I quietly moved my steamer chair 
so as not to lose a word. 

They had been relating various experiences 
in the woods and jungles, to which 1 listened 
with quiet amusement — for many of them were 
179 


THOR 


outrageous feats of imagination — when one 
of the strangers began his story by describing 
a log cabin in the Sierra Madres, where he had 
recently spent a year in hunting. As he pro- 
ceeded, I recognized, from his accurate de- 
scription, the dear old log cabin of my child- 
hood. 

One day near the end of Winter, when the 
sport had been unusually good, his party of 
three had brought home a splendid quantity 
of game; but the following morning, when 
they started to prepare breakfast, not a rabbit, 
bird or deer was to be found. 

The game was kept in a small room adjoin- 
ing the kitchen, the door and window of which 
were securely fastened. The men were greatly 
perplexed, as it seemed utterly impossible for 
any human to have entered without their 
knowledge. 

The following day an incident occurred that 
made them forget, for the time, about the 
missing game. Not a bear had yet been shot 
by any of the party; in fact, not a bear 
had been sighted. The men were a consider- 
able distance from the cabin when one of 
them, a Frenchman, became separated from 

180 


THOR 


his companions. He was standing in a small 
clearing, beside a great pine tree, having just 
finished reloading his rifle, when he was 
startled by the sudden crashing of the under- 
brush, and suddenly a huge bear plunged forth, 
not ten yards from where he stood. He raised 
his gun and took aim, but the quickness, or 
possibly the nearness, of the bear made him 
nervous He missed. 

With a warning growl the bear made a 
plunge toward the hunter, whose presence of 
mind deserted him in the face of the danger. 
He made a dash for the nearest tree and 
scaled it like a monkey. Not until he was 
well up in the branches did he remember that 
he was not accustomed to climbing trees. 

Bears have a unique little way of teaching 
men their real value. 

The bear, startled and furious at the sound 
of the gun, furious also at the sound of the 
man’s cries and screams, prepared to follow his 
enemy up the tree, all the while uttering 
those angry snarls that hunters dread more 
than the fiercest growls. The man con- 
tinued to scream, in hope of alarming his 
comrades. 

181 


THOR 


The human voice ringing through the 
woods brought rescue, but from an unex- 
pected source. 

A second noisy crashing through the thick 
underbrush was heard, and another larger and 
still more ferocious-looking black bear plunged 
into the open space, stood silent for a minute, 
his small, deep-set eyes traveling slowly from 
beast to man. Then he uttered a short, sharp, 
significant growl, and plunged back into the 
bushes. The other bear, reluctantly, sullenly, 
as if obeying the order of a superior, fol- 
lowed. 

As soon as the man was sure that the bears 
were well away from the clearing he started to 
descend from the tree — just as his comrades 
made their appearance. When he told them 
his strange story of how the great beast had 
saved his life, they laughed and declared that 
they doubted his having seen a bear at 
all. 

That night the men carried home a heavy 
load of game, which was stored with great 
care in the little room. In the morning the 
room was empty. 

This second pillaging angered and fright- 

182 


THOR 


ened them. They had intended to store suffi- 
cient meat to last during the snowstorm that 
threatened. 

They decided that a watch should be estab- 
lished, each man taking his turn. 

No sign of the mysterious visitant was dis- 
covered until near the middle of the third 
night. The Frenchman, who had fallen asleep 
while on guard, was awakened by a grating 
sound, that he instantly recognized as caused 
by the deliberate raising of the large wooden 
latch securing the outer door of the kitchen. 
Revolver in hand, he crept cautiously to the 
open door between the two rooms, and by the 
faint light that shone from the fireplace of the 
room in which he was standing, he was able 
to distinguish the outlines of a huge black ob- 
ject. He took deliberate aim, and his shot 
caused the black object to utter a dreadful 
yell. The noise woke the other men, who 
sprang up in terror. One of them immediately 
struck a light, which revealed to them a large 
black bear struggling desperately in his death 
agony. 

The next day, as the men were removing the 
skin from the bear, they discovered a fine steel 
183 


THOR 


chain riveted around his neck, buried in the 
deep fur. 

“ I have that chain now/' continued the nar- 
rator of the story, “ and the skin, which is the 
finest black bear skin I have ever seen, also fell 
to my share. I often look at the little chain, 
and wonder what romance, what history, that 
bear could have told had he had the power to 
speak. Human hands surely placed the chain 
where we found it. Another remarkable cir- 
cumstance is that, while no further secret dep- 
redations were made upon our stores, bears be- 
gan to come boldly — sometimes singly, often 
in pairs — lurking around and making sudden 
assaults upon us, so that it was actually unsafe 
for a man to venture a step beyond the door, 
unless armed. 

“The cunning of the bear who understood 
how to unfasten the door and appropriate our 
food had evidently not been imparted to his 
friends. He was unquestionably a sort of 
ruler — or at least, the guiding intelligence of 
his kind — who for some inconceivable rea- 
son held sacred human life. Three splendid 
animals were shot before they fully realized 
the danger lurking within that cabin. Their 

184 


THOR 


dead comrade had not only inspired the vicious 
beasts with confidence in mankind, but also 
with faith in the dwellers in the cabin. But 
when the bears began to realize that we were 
bent on killing them — possibly their instinct 
told them that we were responsible for the dis- 
appearance of their ruler — their characteristic 
instincts, murderous and vindictive, were 
aroused. Three of them were shot down from 
the cabin window, but before we could get 
hold of them their frantic comrades had liter- 
ally torn them to pieces. 

“ Previous to the first shooting, our game 
alone had been in danger. Now, we stood on 
guard for our very lives, and we had more 
than one close call.” The man paused. 

“ Not a bad yarn,” remarked one of the lis- 
teners. 

“ It’s true,” quietly answered the man, “ and 
the conviction that I shot and killed the beast, 
that, I am sure, was the one who saved me 
from the jaws of one of his kin that day 
in the woods, will be a bitter memory as 
long as I live. I have the chain from 
the bear’s neck in my bag in the cabin. I 
will show it to you to-morrow, and prove 
185 


THOR 


to you the reality of that part of the yarn, 
at least.” 

“ It is indeed a true story ! ” I spoke im- 
pulsively, forgetting that these men were 
strangers. I had no thought to waste on 
formalities when my heart seemed breaking 
with grief. I was conscious of but one 
thing, that I sat in the presence of the mur- 
derer of my beautiful Thor — the bear too 
noble to kill his defenseless enemy, even at 
a time when he was undoubtedly almost 
crazed by hunger. 

Thor was always hungry, even when the 
dainties of civilization were his daily fare. I 
do not doubt that the bear felt sure these 
hunters had not half his right to the cabin, 
for it had been his home ; nor did he realize 
that he was not entitled to the good things to 
be found there, to which he had been welcome 
in the old days. 

I longed desperately to get possession of 
the chain. 

I related to the strangers the early history 
of the bear. 

Something of the pain I felt must surely 
have crept into my voice, for the men were 


THOR 


silent when I finished, all save the man who 
had killed Thor. 

“ I am very, very sorry,” he said, gently. “ I 
might have given the bear a chance for his 
life ; but, at the time, it seemed the only 
thing to do. Had I understood — well, I 
swear I should no more have shot at that bear 
than at a man.” 

He rose abruptly and left the deck. In a 
very few minutes he returned and dropped 
into my hands the little, worn, half-rusted 
chain. 

This Frenchman had the politeness of his 
race, and every day during the remainder of 
the trip he apologized for killing Thor. 

“ It was a toss-up that night,” he invariably 
insisted. “ When the bear was discovered, I 
was convinced that my life or his was de- 
manded.” 

I often look at the little chain and wonder 
if Thor ever showed it to the other bears, and 
if he ever told them how it was placed on 
his neck by the hand of their natural enemy — 
man ; and if these honest forest folk, seeing, 
dimly understood that among those enemies 
there was one whose object in life was not to 
187 


THOR 


kill, and for her sake spared the lives of some 
of her kin. 

The bear who turns and kills the man pur- 
suing him to death is called “ a vicious, des- 
perate beast.” 

The man who kills a bear is called “ a good 
sportsman.” 

But the one who created both — what does 
He say ? What will be the great verdict of 
the Almighty, who numbers the sparrows, and 
whose love goes out to the humblest life His 
creative power has called into being ? 


x88 


CAjCCIO 


A DOG WHO LOVED A TURTLE 



* ACCIO is a Willoughby pug, 
with skin like old gold satin, 
and eyes dark and soft as 
velvet. When he lifts those 
great, tender eyes to your 
face, and looks a sympa- 
thetic response to every 
word you utter, you can- 
not doubt that he has a 
sensitive nature and an exquisite soul. 

To those of little faith and small percep- 
tion, who find it hard to believe that dumb 
creatures have souls, the story of Caccio’s 
love — expressive of almost weird intelligence 
— will present an interesting problem. 

The dog’s master is a former Army officer, 
whose Winter home is in Florida, near the 
St. John’s River. 


189 


CACCIO 


The house is one of the quaint, old-style 
mansions raised high above the ground on 
brick piers, for the purpose of admitting free 
circulation of air beneath. Under the house 
is a layer of cool white sand. 

Perhaps it was the tempting possibilities of 
that cool sand that prompted one of the 
men to bring home a young land-turtle cap- 
tured in the woods, half a mile from the 
house. The turtle’s shell was pierced and a 
bit of fine wire was looped through it. To 
the loop was fastened a thick hempen cord, 
the other end of which was tied to one of the 
house-piers. The cord was about thirty feet 
in length, thus leaving the little creature free 
to burrow in the soft sand beneath the house, 
or to wander through the grass of the lawn. 

These considerations for her comfort the 
turtle disdainfully ignored. She immediately 
made a bee line diagonally across the lawn in 
the direction of the home from which she had 
been taken, at greater speed than is usual for 
turtles. When she reached the end of her 
cord she proceeded to pull and strain and 
worry in her efforts to continue her home- 
ward journey — until someone lifted the home- 

190 


CACCIO 


sick, unreconciled little stranger and carried 
her back under the house. 

Patiently, persistently, she crept forth again 
and again — always in the same direction — 
never ceasing her weary struggle to break 
the cord, straining against the restraint so 
new to the little creature born to the freedom 
of warm sands and cooling brooks, accus- 
tomed to morning frolics with tiny frogs and to 
midnight revels with those all-night rounders, 
the katydids. 

At first the various domestic animals about 
the place paid delicate attentions to the 
young prisoner; but the stolid, undemonstra- 
tive manner in which friendly overtures were 
ignored disgusted all the dogs and cats, and 
hopelessly offended the stately parrot. They 
straightway decided to boycott, to ignore 
utterly, the shy or — what seemed to them 
more probable — disdainful young stranger. 
If she noticed, she gave no sign ; only drew 
her head deeper in her shell and strained 
more desperately at the cord. 

No wonder the other animals had no sym- 
pathy with the ungrateful, ugly little creat- 
ure, who so frankly and foolishly resented the 


CACCIO 


charming home and the tender care she was 
admitted to share. 

One only was persistent. That was Caccio, 
the pug. His heart went out to the mutinous 
little turtle in the very beginning, and beat 
true to the very end. 

Caccio passed entire days at her side, danc- 
ing joyously along as the turtle made futile 
pilgrimages from the house to the end of her 
rope, always in the same direction. While she 
tugged and strained, Caccio would stand pa- 
tiently at her side, eyes moist with sympathetic 
pain, silently watching the rebellious misery 
that appealed to his tender heart more than 
happiness or contentment could. 

He used to lie down at her side, and his 
voiceless sympathy must have pierced through 
the turtle’s stony shell. One day she ceased 
for an instant to mourn, and, in vague wonder, 
thrust forth her head to see what manner of 
creature was trying to console her. 

Caccio looked into the tiny face with its 
wee, fierce eyes, and thought her beautiful. 
The captive looked into the face of Caccio 
and saw a handsome, high-bred creature, 
whose eyes were beaming with tenderness and 

192 


CACCIO 


with strange and exquisite pity. Abashed and 
pleased, despite her troubles, yet still mutinous, 
she hastily drew her head again deep in her 
shell. But she strained no more at the 
hempen cord that day. 

Nature, however, was strong within that 
turtle heart, and love was new. The following 
day she made the usual pilgrimage to the end 
of the cord and struggled rebelliously as 
ever. But Caccio was at her side, and she 
modestly peeped from her shell to catch another 
glimpse of the beautiful face. 

Caccio, who had loved before, was familiar 
with the ways of girls, and was well aware that 
when she imagined he was not looking, she 
would take another peep. So he kept one eye 
on the little window through which her head 
would surely come. 

When at last her little head did pop out — he 
kissed her. 

From that time, every night and every 
morning, and after the shortest absence, the 
shy little turtle would greet his return with a 
willing kiss. Occasionally others, who loved 
Caccio and resented his undivided attention to 
the young stranger, would capture him for a 
193 


CACCIO 


ride or a frolic. On his return the turtle 
would greet him with every sign of welcoming 
delight. 

Caccio had a noble heart and his love for 
the turtle was beautiful; but the object of his 
adoration, being only a turtle, was naturally 
incapable of fully appreciating and recipro- 
cating his deep affection. To her, love was 
but the sport of Summer days. 

The manner of the turtle became constantly 
more affectionate and more fascinating. Caccio 
actually begrudged the time spent at meals, 
and hated night, that separated him from his 
queer sweetheart. 

During long sunny days, stretched side by 
side under the acacia trees that edged the 
lawn, those two dumb beasts whispered secrets 
in animal language. We were sure that the 
turtle, woman-fashion, would before long put 
Caccio’s love to the test. 

Caccio’s conscience had whispered to him 
that, if he chose, he could give the turtle her 
freedom; but like all loves, Caccio’s had its 
element of selfishness. He was convinced 
that the freedom for which his sweetheart 
pined meant separation — irrevocable separa- 

194 


CACCIO 


tion. It would be a simple matter to gnaw 
through the hempen cord with his sharp teeth 
and set the beautiful prisoner free, but he had 
not passed long days in her presence without 
growing to understand the turtle, and he felt 
that in her freedom she would forget him 
utterly. 

His heart grew heavy with pain at the sor- 
rowful conviction that, when safe at home 
with the other turtles — among whom Caccio 
was sure she had many adorers — she would 
listen to the serenading frogs and katydids, 
at the midnight revel held in honor of her 
return, without ever a thought of his despair. 
So I do not wonder that it was many days be- 
fore he found courage to consider the matter 
seriously. 

What eloquence the turtle used that last 
sad day we never knew. Caccio was seen to 
rise suddenly from where he had been lying at 
her side, to look down at her for a moment 
tenderly and thoughtfully, then to begin hur- 
riedly to gnaw the hempen cord. In less 
than a minute the turtle was free, and had 
started on her journey home. Never did 
turtle travel so quickly, without ever a pause, 
195 


CACCIO 


without a good-bye kiss, and, more than likely, 
without a single thought of gratitude or of 
pity for the aching heart of him who loved 
her well enough to give her the freedom that 
meant his despair. 

Caccio stood a moment, silent and desolate, 
then darted after her, overtook the rapidly 
disappearing mite, and began to dance around 
her with despairing little barks that the hard- 
est heart in the world could not have re- 
sisted. 

The turtle stopped, thrust out her head for 
a hasty kiss, which the sorrowful little heart 
had hoped she would give him of her own 
sweet will. He kissed her tenderly, with no 
hint of reproach. 

To great natures the happiness of the loved 
one is the truest joy — and Caccio's nature 
was great. 

When Caccio had watched the turtle quite 
out of sight, he danced back to the house in 
his old-time, merry way, sprang to the veranda 
where the various members and guests of the 
family were seated, and made brave efforts to 
express to them his delight in the great deed 
done. We understood him more perfectly, 
196 


CACCIO 


perhaps, than if he had told us in words his 
story of brave renunciation. 

Day after day Caccio sought the spot where 
the turtle had kissed him good-bye, and with 
expectant eyes stood motionless, peering into 
the shadowy woods, pitifully hoping that love 
might prompt her to return. But all his 
watching and waiting were vain. 














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